Our users in Sweden can now purchase RuneScape membership without a credit card, thanks to Wallie!
Pre-paid game cards offering RuneScape membership in a variety of durations are available to buy in Pressbyran and 7-Eleven stores throughout Sweden.
To find your nearest store, check out the Wallie card website.
Archive for the ‘Runescape News’ Category
Wallie Cards Available In Sweden
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009News from http://www.zybez.net/community/index.php
Mobilising Armies (developers’ Blog)
Friday, June 26th, 2009News from http://www.zybez.net/community/index.php
When developing a piece of content, how long it takes to develop is generally a combination of two factors.
1. How big the piece of content is.
2. How different the content is to anything weve done previously.
This post takes a look at the trade-off we have to make between these two factors when designing a piece of content.
There are some pretty massive pros and cons of doing something very new VS doing something big and polished using techniques we have already perfected.
The advantages of doing something totally new and innovative include:
* It leads to whole new features and new techniques, which can then be re-used (and further refined) in future content.
* It keeps the game fresh and varied, rather than just doing more of the same.
* Its essential to keeping the game cutting edge and keeping ahead of the competition.
* All this means its very good for the long-term of the game.
The disadvantages of doing something new and innovative include:
* Its high risk - because we havent done it before, we dont know so clearly how well it work or how long it will take.
* It takes a lot more time. We have to add in whole new systems to support the new things we are doing. It is also quite likely to need repeated attempts and redesigns before getting something that works well.
* It results in a smaller piece of content, because a lot of the time instead goes into trying new techniques.
* Its often not quite as polished as content made using tried and tested methods, because its pioneering new systems.
* It can result in unrealistic player expectations, because many players assume that long development time = huge, very polished content.
* All this means its not so great for the immediate short-term.
As you can see, its a very difficult balancing act when deciding how adventurous to be when trying new ideas and new techniques! Because we expect to be running RuneScape for years to come, we tend to take a more long-term approach with content design, which means we try quite a lot of new and innovative content.
Sometimes we come up with something so useful its hard to imagine how we ever did without it. I still fondly remember the first quest we did that permanently changed the appearance of the world to the player, rather than everything just resetting back again a few minutes later. At the time, it was massively difficult to do, because we had to rethink the way we did a lot of things. These days its completely standard, is used everywhere, and its hard to imagine doing without it!
Mobilising Armies is a great example of something quite experimental, which is very different to anything weve done before. Im sure youve noticed how that has impacted on its development time. As you know, Mobilising Armies has been in development for many months, and has been quite delayed. This ISNT because its the most epic, mammoth, huge, polished piece of content youve ever seen, but rather because weve really tried to do something very new and different.
Just some of the new things weve tried for the first time in Mobilising Armies are:
* It has a totally different camera view and controls to previous content.
* It adds the ability to select and control multiple units at once, rather than just moving a single avatar around the map.
* To cope with the fact that there are more things going on at once than usual, and so there is a lot more information to convey simultaneously than we are used to, we developed a variety of new information display features. These include NPC stack icons, timer bars and dynamic mouse cursors.
* It has a very different graphical scale to content we have designed previously. Everything is much more zoomed out.
So, when playing Mobilising Armies, as well as enjoying the game itself, take a look at all the things it does that youve never seen done in RuneScape before. This is just the very first pioneering attempt at a whole load of new features added to the engine. Over time, the best of those new features will be refined and used elsewhere, which, when you start imagining the possibilities, is quite exciting.
Mobilising Armies should be with you in the next few weeks. Thank you for reading and we hope to see you on the battlefield!
1. How big the piece of content is.
2. How different the content is to anything weve done previously.
This post takes a look at the trade-off we have to make between these two factors when designing a piece of content.
There are some pretty massive pros and cons of doing something very new VS doing something big and polished using techniques we have already perfected.
The advantages of doing something totally new and innovative include:
* It leads to whole new features and new techniques, which can then be re-used (and further refined) in future content.
* It keeps the game fresh and varied, rather than just doing more of the same.
* Its essential to keeping the game cutting edge and keeping ahead of the competition.
* All this means its very good for the long-term of the game.
The disadvantages of doing something new and innovative include:
* Its high risk - because we havent done it before, we dont know so clearly how well it work or how long it will take.
* It takes a lot more time. We have to add in whole new systems to support the new things we are doing. It is also quite likely to need repeated attempts and redesigns before getting something that works well.
* It results in a smaller piece of content, because a lot of the time instead goes into trying new techniques.
* Its often not quite as polished as content made using tried and tested methods, because its pioneering new systems.
* It can result in unrealistic player expectations, because many players assume that long development time = huge, very polished content.
* All this means its not so great for the immediate short-term.
As you can see, its a very difficult balancing act when deciding how adventurous to be when trying new ideas and new techniques! Because we expect to be running RuneScape for years to come, we tend to take a more long-term approach with content design, which means we try quite a lot of new and innovative content.
Sometimes we come up with something so useful its hard to imagine how we ever did without it. I still fondly remember the first quest we did that permanently changed the appearance of the world to the player, rather than everything just resetting back again a few minutes later. At the time, it was massively difficult to do, because we had to rethink the way we did a lot of things. These days its completely standard, is used everywhere, and its hard to imagine doing without it!
Mobilising Armies is a great example of something quite experimental, which is very different to anything weve done before. Im sure youve noticed how that has impacted on its development time. As you know, Mobilising Armies has been in development for many months, and has been quite delayed. This ISNT because its the most epic, mammoth, huge, polished piece of content youve ever seen, but rather because weve really tried to do something very new and different.
Just some of the new things weve tried for the first time in Mobilising Armies are:
* It has a totally different camera view and controls to previous content.
* It adds the ability to select and control multiple units at once, rather than just moving a single avatar around the map.
* To cope with the fact that there are more things going on at once than usual, and so there is a lot more information to convey simultaneously than we are used to, we developed a variety of new information display features. These include NPC stack icons, timer bars and dynamic mouse cursors.
* It has a very different graphical scale to content we have designed previously. Everything is much more zoomed out.
So, when playing Mobilising Armies, as well as enjoying the game itself, take a look at all the things it does that youve never seen done in RuneScape before. This is just the very first pioneering attempt at a whole load of new features added to the engine. Over time, the best of those new features will be refined and used elsewhere, which, when you start imagining the possibilities, is quite exciting.
Mobilising Armies should be with you in the next few weeks. Thank you for reading and we hope to see you on the battlefield!
Feedback And Blue Blocks
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009News from http://www.zybez.net/community/index.php
The Unforgettable Tale of a Lead Designer
Mod Mark here, Lead Designer of RuneScape. Im the Mark who has been here at Jagex for six years - not to be confused with Mod MMG: he is the Mark who is now our CEO. As lead designer, I am ultimately responsible for the new content we add to the game. This includes deciding what quests we develop, which new skills we work on, where we put new minigames, what levels they are, how difficult we want them to be, how much XP they give, which areas get new achievement diaries, and what new aspects of the game we should introduce, like the distractions and diversions, etc, etc. I dont actually come up with the majority of new ideas, nor do I write the content, I just decide what direction we want to take the game and create objectives for the developers, helping them to decide which concepts we want to take into full development. Then, after they design how these things should work and create the code that makes their ideas real, I get to play it through and advise how we can improve it to make it the best it can be, before it is launched into the main game.
I am fortunate to be surrounded by talented, creative individuals who make my job very, very easy! Our relationship is similar to that of a sports coach and a team - the coach isnt actually out on the field playing with the team but, ultimately, he is responsible for its performance. My job is just like that, except my team this time is Captain Mod John A and his Dwarven Raiders.
Playing through content for the first time is always one of the most exciting parts of my job. When you help someone to sculpt their ideas in the design brief stage of development, you always have a visual idea of what the final product will look like, or you imagine how difficult a puzzle should be. No matter how much you discuss things with the writer or an artist, people often have a slightly different opinion from you, which can have interesting effects on the final product.
Anyway, it had been a few years since the last dwarf quest, so I played through a few of the crucial elements of Giant Dwarf, Forgettable Tale... and Between a Rock and thought back on the first conversations I had with Mod Vincent, the original developer of the Red Axe storyline. Mod John As style is very different from his, but there were a few things we were keen to keep consistent, like the camera flyover of the city at the beginning (we have had those in all the dwarf quests - Mod Vincent was big on cut scenes but Mod John A less so) and the whole Red Axe/mining conglomerates/drunk dwarf-baiting plotline.
So, I found Captain Veldaban in the north-east of the city. Id had the new concept art for Veldaban on my desktop for ages, so Id been looking forward to his updated look...
But things were a little...blue. In fact, most of the new areas and quest-specific characters were just blue boxes, as the Graphics team were still working on the new graphics. Sometimes, with content we write, we ask the developer to create the majority of it using old graphics, and ask the Graphics team to work on the new assets after they have seen the puzzles, gameplay and level design. This is always quite an odd experience, dodging level 70 blue boxes or trying to find the blue box-shaped key amongst your inventory of blue woodblock objects.
Offering Feedback
Playing through a piece of content to give feedback to a developer is quite a challenge. Not only are you playing through it for your own fun and amusement (we never release content we dont find fun ourselves), but you have to think about the core aims of the project - who the content is for, what sort of audience we want it to appeal to, the rewards, target levels, etc. We also had two reward areas planned for this quest and some brand new Ranged NPCs, which we have very few of in the game. These were of particular interest to me, since we had increased the skill requirements for the quest, taking the Strength requirement up to 69, and the NPC combat levels had to be increased to reflect this. However, with the area just using placeholder blue box graphics and temporary stats, I decided to leave looking at the reward areas until they were properly finished.
Playthroughs last for about half a day, as I like to play through the content once, then specific sections again with a more critical eye. I look for all sorts of important factors like: Is it clear to the user whats going on? Do the different sections of the quest flow into one another? Do they keep the player interested during the more tricky sections, like the mine cart puzzles (which Mod John A has approached in an original way)? Is the dialogue too wordy? Is the quest self-contained? Are the main characters compelling and believable? Is it rewarding enough? All sorts of issues like this can and will come up in those initial playthroughs and trigger conversation between myself and the developer.
One of the most interesting parts of the quest was the point in which Mod John A chose to reveal the plot twist. I was surprised that he chose to reveal it in that way, and it was very different from how I had expected it from the original design briefs. Were due to have a feedback meeting after he has come back from holiday, and I am really interested to hear why he did it that way. Im keen to change it, but I always like to discuss these things with the developer and find out what they wanted to achieve. Sometimes its just a case of changing a few words, other times we rethink and try a totally different approach. Its always a very creative time in the products life-cycle.
Im looking forward to chatting to Mod John A about his content and how we can improve it. From what I have seen of the new models and animations coming from the Graphics team, its going to look great!
New requirements in full
We've decided to make the quest's skill requirements higher than the ones that we previously released. Here are the new requirements in full:
* Level 61 Hunter
* Level 61 Firemaking
* Level 69 Strength
* Must have completed Forgettable Tale of a Drunken Dwarf.
* There will be an enemy to fight, but we haven't quite decided its level yet.
Mod Mark here, Lead Designer of RuneScape. Im the Mark who has been here at Jagex for six years - not to be confused with Mod MMG: he is the Mark who is now our CEO. As lead designer, I am ultimately responsible for the new content we add to the game. This includes deciding what quests we develop, which new skills we work on, where we put new minigames, what levels they are, how difficult we want them to be, how much XP they give, which areas get new achievement diaries, and what new aspects of the game we should introduce, like the distractions and diversions, etc, etc. I dont actually come up with the majority of new ideas, nor do I write the content, I just decide what direction we want to take the game and create objectives for the developers, helping them to decide which concepts we want to take into full development. Then, after they design how these things should work and create the code that makes their ideas real, I get to play it through and advise how we can improve it to make it the best it can be, before it is launched into the main game.
I am fortunate to be surrounded by talented, creative individuals who make my job very, very easy! Our relationship is similar to that of a sports coach and a team - the coach isnt actually out on the field playing with the team but, ultimately, he is responsible for its performance. My job is just like that, except my team this time is Captain Mod John A and his Dwarven Raiders.
Playing through content for the first time is always one of the most exciting parts of my job. When you help someone to sculpt their ideas in the design brief stage of development, you always have a visual idea of what the final product will look like, or you imagine how difficult a puzzle should be. No matter how much you discuss things with the writer or an artist, people often have a slightly different opinion from you, which can have interesting effects on the final product.
Anyway, it had been a few years since the last dwarf quest, so I played through a few of the crucial elements of Giant Dwarf, Forgettable Tale... and Between a Rock and thought back on the first conversations I had with Mod Vincent, the original developer of the Red Axe storyline. Mod John As style is very different from his, but there were a few things we were keen to keep consistent, like the camera flyover of the city at the beginning (we have had those in all the dwarf quests - Mod Vincent was big on cut scenes but Mod John A less so) and the whole Red Axe/mining conglomerates/drunk dwarf-baiting plotline.
So, I found Captain Veldaban in the north-east of the city. Id had the new concept art for Veldaban on my desktop for ages, so Id been looking forward to his updated look...
But things were a little...blue. In fact, most of the new areas and quest-specific characters were just blue boxes, as the Graphics team were still working on the new graphics. Sometimes, with content we write, we ask the developer to create the majority of it using old graphics, and ask the Graphics team to work on the new assets after they have seen the puzzles, gameplay and level design. This is always quite an odd experience, dodging level 70 blue boxes or trying to find the blue box-shaped key amongst your inventory of blue woodblock objects.
Offering Feedback
Playing through a piece of content to give feedback to a developer is quite a challenge. Not only are you playing through it for your own fun and amusement (we never release content we dont find fun ourselves), but you have to think about the core aims of the project - who the content is for, what sort of audience we want it to appeal to, the rewards, target levels, etc. We also had two reward areas planned for this quest and some brand new Ranged NPCs, which we have very few of in the game. These were of particular interest to me, since we had increased the skill requirements for the quest, taking the Strength requirement up to 69, and the NPC combat levels had to be increased to reflect this. However, with the area just using placeholder blue box graphics and temporary stats, I decided to leave looking at the reward areas until they were properly finished.
Playthroughs last for about half a day, as I like to play through the content once, then specific sections again with a more critical eye. I look for all sorts of important factors like: Is it clear to the user whats going on? Do the different sections of the quest flow into one another? Do they keep the player interested during the more tricky sections, like the mine cart puzzles (which Mod John A has approached in an original way)? Is the dialogue too wordy? Is the quest self-contained? Are the main characters compelling and believable? Is it rewarding enough? All sorts of issues like this can and will come up in those initial playthroughs and trigger conversation between myself and the developer.
One of the most interesting parts of the quest was the point in which Mod John A chose to reveal the plot twist. I was surprised that he chose to reveal it in that way, and it was very different from how I had expected it from the original design briefs. Were due to have a feedback meeting after he has come back from holiday, and I am really interested to hear why he did it that way. Im keen to change it, but I always like to discuss these things with the developer and find out what they wanted to achieve. Sometimes its just a case of changing a few words, other times we rethink and try a totally different approach. Its always a very creative time in the products life-cycle.
Im looking forward to chatting to Mod John A about his content and how we can improve it. From what I have seen of the new models and animations coming from the Graphics team, its going to look great!
New requirements in full
We've decided to make the quest's skill requirements higher than the ones that we previously released. Here are the new requirements in full:
* Level 61 Hunter
* Level 61 Firemaking
* Level 69 Strength
* Must have completed Forgettable Tale of a Drunken Dwarf.
* There will be an enemy to fight, but we haven't quite decided its level yet.
Golden Joystick Awards
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009News from http://www.zybez.net/community/index.php
We want to take this opportunity to thank all our players for their votes, which have helped get Jagex games studio shortlisted as one of the top UK developers in the Golden Joystick Awards. Its really touching to see Jagex recognised in this way by our players and the wider gaming community, and we are delighted that so many of you have voted for us. Given our other awards, it looks like we are going to need a larger trophy cabinet soon! :)
If you dont know anything about the awards and still want to show your support for Jagex, you can do so by visiting the Golden Joystick website at www.goldenjoystick.com and clicking on the UK Developer of the Year listing on the Vote Now page. When we told you about our nomination last week, the response was so overwhelming it actually crashed the Golden Joystick servers within six minutes of our original newspost going live! So, if you experience any problems with the site, just be patient and try again after a few minutes. We also recommend that you un-tick the preference boxes if you dont want to be contacted by the organisers or any third parties, as nobody likes spam.
So once again our sincere thanks for all your support, and, naturally, all credit goes to our fabulous players. :)
Take care, and have fun!
Mod MMG and Andrew
If you dont know anything about the awards and still want to show your support for Jagex, you can do so by visiting the Golden Joystick website at www.goldenjoystick.com and clicking on the UK Developer of the Year listing on the Vote Now page. When we told you about our nomination last week, the response was so overwhelming it actually crashed the Golden Joystick servers within six minutes of our original newspost going live! So, if you experience any problems with the site, just be patient and try again after a few minutes. We also recommend that you un-tick the preference boxes if you dont want to be contacted by the organisers or any third parties, as nobody likes spam.
So once again our sincere thanks for all your support, and, naturally, all credit goes to our fabulous players. :)
Take care, and have fun!
Mod MMG and Andrew
Extended Agility Courses
Monday, June 22nd, 2009News from http://www.zybez.net/community/index.php
If you are serious about Agility, its likely you've not been to the Gnome Stronghold or Gunnjorn's barbarian course for some time. This week, that could change, as these Agility trainers have spent long hours constructing new routes around the courses that only the most agile players should attempt.
These extended courses will not only give you a chance to show off your most agile moves, but will also reward you with weight-reducing clothing, should you complete enough laps.
With the addition of these extended courses, the cave goblins of Dorgesh-Kaan have made some changes to their Agility course, too. Theyve decided to make the course a little less unforgiving, so you should find that you fail less often. The other main change is that the entry requirement for the existing course has been increased from 70 Agility to 80 Agility, while the two extended courses have entry requirements of 85 and 90 Agility, respectively.
Mod Chris L
RuneScape Content Developer
In other news...
We've added a right-click option that will let you quick-start your circus performances, as long as you've been to the circus at least once in the past.
We've now added a new song to the Wilderness Volcano area called Eruption. Check it out when you have a chance!
These extended courses will not only give you a chance to show off your most agile moves, but will also reward you with weight-reducing clothing, should you complete enough laps.
With the addition of these extended courses, the cave goblins of Dorgesh-Kaan have made some changes to their Agility course, too. Theyve decided to make the course a little less unforgiving, so you should find that you fail less often. The other main change is that the entry requirement for the existing course has been increased from 70 Agility to 80 Agility, while the two extended courses have entry requirements of 85 and 90 Agility, respectively.
Mod Chris L
RuneScape Content Developer
In other news...
We've added a right-click option that will let you quick-start your circus performances, as long as you've been to the circus at least once in the past.
We've now added a new song to the Wilderness Volcano area called Eruption. Check it out when you have a chance!
Email:
Phone:
