Runescape... Sucks?

(This is part 1 of a two part post. For part 2 click here).

After a hiatus of about 5 years, I finally logged back into Runescape yesterday. I’m not really sure why. Curiosity? Nostalgia? The desire to play a simple game on my laptop? Whatever the case, this was the first time in half a decade that I had ever given Runescape any serious thought. Ok, yes, I had logged in every now and then in the last 5 years to do Christmas events or what have you (but according to the log in window it had been over 1000 days since I had even done that), but this was the first time that I had considered actually playing the game again.

But has Runescape won me over this time? I really don’t know. It has a lot going for it... Its easy pick up and play nature, its easy going system requirements, its reasonably interesting  (for the most part) quests all make this game something that I could play on my current “you’re-a-parent-now-and-have-no-time-for-gaming” timetable.... But then, the game has at least as much going against it...

Runescape: A Memoir

I started playing Runescape way back in 2002. My last year of high school. It was for my first Runescape character that I came up with my screen name, Masarius, a handle I have used ever since. But I was never really a hard core Runescape’r. I never really got into the PK scene, never got any of my skills to level 99, took long breaks, and never really worried about if what I was doing was the most ‘efficient’ way to play the game. A casual player I guess. But at the same time Runescape had a lot of things that really kept interested. 

Classic Runescape logo.

For starters, as a browser game it ran really well on the family desktop computer (a crappy old Pentium 200mhz based machine, with a generic 1mb video card), and once I got to university I could play it on my low end laptop without too much fuss. And the relatively easy gameplay meant that it was something that my girlfriend (now wife) was also interested in playing with me.

But what I really enjoyed about Runescape was the setting and the environment. I’m a professional archaeologist, and history – particularly medieval history – has always appealed to me. So the medieval fantasy setting was right up my alley. But it was the game world that sucked me in.

When I first started playing, Runescape had a thriving player-driven economy. Pretty much everything in the world was player made. And there was no grand exchange auction house, all trades were done in person. It was a living, breathing, engaging, and even perhaps semi-realistic world. It felt like a real medieval community. Resource gatherers sold raw materials to craftsmen. Craftsmen then made weapons, runes and potions that they sold to monster hunting warriors. Warriors brought back the coins and rare ingredients that fuelled the economy. And, similar to reality, it was necessary to build yourself up into the economy. You might start off as a cook, baking pies and cakes to sell to warriors – saving up the money you made to buy your first set of armour or runes and then setting off on an adventure.

It was a real living economy. Being a “skiller” was a perfectly genuine and respected way to play the game. Being a high level skiller could bring you fame within the game world, and net you a huge profit. And you could actually role-play. Wanted to be a world renowned chef? Go for it! Wanted to be known for making the best swords in the land? Have at it! A world class archer? Start training! The go-to guy for magic supplies? Grab some runes and start networking! Wanted to make your fortune as a merchant or capitalist, finding cheap goods and then selling them to the right market for profit? Just take a little bit of cash and hit the streets! Just want to be a good all-rounder, a “Jack of all trades but master of none”? The game allowed for that too!

People selling items at Varrock (source: reddit).

Yes, there were monster drops – but just about every item of value could be made by the players. If you wanted to be decked out in a suit of armour, you found a smith and bought it. Wanted the best sword in the game? You had to actually hunt out the hand full of people that could make them and strike a deal. And all these deals were made in traditional marketplaces. Draynor, the centre of Varrok (later the Varrok west bank), and the Falador bank would be full of people yelling out what they had for sale and inviting you to take a look. It was a vibrant system of commerce and player interaction.

The world felt alive. It felt genuine. It felt real. And it felt like you could be a part of it and have an actual meaningful impact.

Why I Quit Runescape

So why did I quit? A big part of it was that Jagex purposely and actively eroded that player community. High level items became increasingly non-tradeable. The Grand Exchange with its set minimum and maximum item prices completely destroyed the traditional market place, while giving merchant clans a method of artificially driving prices up and down - the traditional market died over night. Non combat skills stopped receiving updates. And monster drops became the primary way to get weapons and armour – destroying the craftsmen and raw resource gatherers. When I left the only real way to play the game was through combat. Being a pure skiller, or a skill specialist, was almost completely nonviable.

Steel smithing table. You will be seeing this a lot (RuneHQ).

Take smithing for example. When I left, the best weapons and armour a smith could make were runeite. A full set off runeite armour required a smithing level of 99 – something that would take tens if not hundreds of hours to achieve, and millions of gold pieces to buy in the metal bars necessary to train the skill. When I left the weapons available as monster drops far surpassed that which could be made by smiths, and rune armour was considered entry level at best. Hundreds of hours of work, and millions of gold pieces, just to be able to make the ENTRY LEVEL armour... Jagex completely destroyed the smithing industry. Which in turn destroyed the mining industry as there were no smiths to buy the metal ores. And many of the non combat skills had this same fate.

Runescape lost its soul. The game became less about social interaction and role-playing in a living medieval community, and more about combat and efficiency. A generic Diablo or WoW clone, focusing on grinding mobs before fighting boss monsters and doing raids for loot. New quests and items were geared towards combat, particularly melee. Everything else was left to rot in irrelevancy.

Runescape and Grinding

But all that could be ignored if it wasn't for the main reason I quit - the grind. Runescape comes from another time. A time when MMORPGs were all about making you grind for experience, and dragging out the gameplay as much as possible.

Ultima Online - the grandfather of modern MMORPGs

The game has clear influence from earlier editions of Dungeons and Dragons and the Ultima series. But in 2010 Runescape was taking grinding to another level.  Everything about the game was a grind. First you have the basic do-this-same-simple-and-boring-task-over-and-over-to-earn-the-smallest-amount-of-xp gamplay for grinding out skill levels. But then Jagex had done everything it could to lengthen out levelling as much as possible beyond the repetitive gameplay. Higher level (and high xp) trees, monsters, and ore rocks are rare and have lengthy respawn times. And good training spots are almost always some distance from a bank – forcing you to walk your character a reasonable distance between loads of raw resources or monster runs, meaning a large amount of down time.

Each skill could take hundreds of hours to reach level 99. And from about level 60 onwards most skills devolved into a mind bending level of monotony. Hundreds of hours of doing the same menial tasks to earn the meagre xp offered. Hundreds of hours of marching to and from your training spot to the bank. Grinding, always grinding. Mind. Numbing. Monotony.

And of course, without the living economy skills like smithing and fletching are completely devalued and make no money. So you either have to grind on mobs to get enough good drops to sell so you can afford the raw materials, or you have to grind the corresponding raw resource skill and collect the raw resources yourself. Essentially forcing you to spend hundreds of hours grinding out a skill you don’t want to train just to get the privilege of then grinding out the skill you wanted to train. And in the end training of non-combat skills were worthless anyway. With no profit, no reward, and ultimately no point as the items you will get access to by training the skill are already outclassed by items dropped by monsters - or were simply easier to just buy from an NPC store with money made from the sale of loot.

And that is what ultimately killed the game for me. I got my character so most of his skills were above level 50, and his combat skills were in the mid 70s. I did all the quests that I could do with my levels, and then....... that was it. All the available quests had skill level requirements above what I had, and if I wanted to progress in the game I had to monotonously grind my skills. I was left with a very simple question – do I actually want to spend the next 20 hours arbitrarily grinding skills just to do the next quest? Do I actually want to spend the hundreds of hours of grinding necessary to complete all the quests and experience the end game? With no actual pay off. And do I want to grind on mobs to get my combat level high enough to experience the end game content? Or do I just want to play something else? In the time it takes to monotonously train just one Runescape skill to level 99 I could play an entire single player RPG, or several FPS titles. You know, actually experience games rather than lighting countless camp fires or burying millions of bones.

Grind runecrafting to 99, or play Baldur's from beginning to end?

The thing is I'm not necessarily against the grind as a concept. And I'm certainly not against the game being hard or time consuming to complete. In fact the economy that I want the game to have outright requires that the skills are difficult to master, otherwise everyone would be making the best items straight away and the economy would again just dry up. But Runescape isn't a hard game, or even a difficult game, just a very time consuming one. Anyone can get a skill to 99 if they are willing to commit weeks or months of their lives endlessly doing the same simple monotonous tasks. I would happily take a skill to level 99 if levelling was rewarding and the gameplay was engaging and fun. But it's not...

But now Runescape 3 is out. A new combat system. And I’ve heard that earning xp has never been easier. Will it be different? I'm genuinely interested to find out. Let’s play some Runescape!

E3 2014 - Sony's Victory over Microsoft

In my 2013 E3 recap I chose the PS4 as my favourite of the next gen consoles - and a year later nothing has changed.

Look, I get that E3 conferences are more about marketing and hype building than an actual conference, but come on Microsoft tell me something to get excited about your console! Phil Spencer basically came on stage and said 'we don't have any thing to tell ya... so instead here's a bunch of games that you'll be able to buy... eventually'. And most of those games were sequels and/or new trailers for games that have already been announced. 

Phil Spencer announcing that Microsoft has nothing to say about Xbox

I like hearing about games, and getting on-board with hype and all that. But I would have really liked to see some news about the direction the hardware is going. How they are going to bridge the gap between the Xbox and PS4? Anything on cloud computing and bumping up the power of the machine remotely? Backwards compatibility? An update on DirectX 12 and the impact the new API will have on the Xbox? Nope... They didn't even mention that the Xbox now comes with a Kinect free bundle, or that developers now have access to the 10% of GPU power that the Xbox One previously reserved just for the Kinect. A statement of how that pushes the Xbox's performance closer to the PS4, or how this will benefit games going forward would be nice. And on that note, how about an indication of how Microsoft plans to keep Kinect relevant? Anything to tell me that they are actually trying to compete against Sony.

And how about Microsoft's other properties? Development tools for Surface and Windows Phone 8? Remote play or integration with Surface tablets or Windows 8 PCs? Not even a mention. I get that this was specifically an Xbox conference, but at this stage remote play or a PlayStation Now equivalent for playing Xbox games on Windows 8 PCs and laptops or Surface tablets seems like a no-brainer - giving a potential boost to those struggling platforms, and more options to gamers potentially resulting in more software sales. An all-round win for Microsoft.

The launch of the Xbox One has been very very shaky with its reversals of constant online DRM, restriction on pre-owned games, mandatory Kinect, and being underpowered compared to PS4. I really thought Microsoft would have a hard hitting conference with new features for the machine and new IP's. But instead it felt very lack luster.

Back when developers didn't mind you sharing your games

The Sony conference on the other hand had a little more going for it. Sony came out hard hitting with jabs at Microsoft about the power of the PS4 and the PS4 camera being an optional extra. But Sony also announced some really interesting features. Full Youtube and Twitch integration for updating and live streaming is awesome, providing they don't do a Nintendo with it. The PS4 exclusive feature of Far Cry 4 that will allow your friends to play the game with you co-op for free without owning the game themselves is very interesting. It reminds me very much of the old Blizzard games allowing multiplayer only 'spawn' versions of the games to be installed on multiple computers from one disk, or the Age of Empires games which allowed multiple PC's (I think up to 5) to participate in multiplayer games as long as one person had a CD In the drive. Hopefully this is a direction that more developers will go. 

And PlayStation TV.... Pure awesome to see this being released out side of Japan. At US$99 the specs are awesome for the price. But with remote play, PlayStation Now, PSN, and compatibility with vita carts this machine will absolutely come into it's own as a companion console to the PS4. I could see me picking up a couple of these in future to put in the bedroom or the kids room as a cheap alternative to buying several PS4's to meet my families growing gaming needs (and my desire to play GTA in bed). It'll be a great, cheap, family console that I could see a lot of people buying for their kids if marketed right. - Children watching TV, but you wanna use the PS4? Use PlayStation TV to stream your game to another TV anywhere in your house! 6 year old wants to play games, but you don't want to lay down $600 on a second console? PlayStation TV! - That's if it ever comes comes out in New Zealand that is... 

But the biggest announcement was easily the upcoming beta of PlayStation Now, which will not only allow some backwards compatibility with PS3 titles but will also allow PS3 and PS4 games on other Sony devices like TV's and PlayStation TV without a PS4 console. But they still didn't give any real details at all on how it will work, bandwidth requirements, etc.... And given that New Zealand only got a handful of the available PS Classics titles during the PS3 era (which did not include my favourite PS1 game - Blood Omen) I'm still skeptical that NZ will get a full version of the service. My concerns about PlayStation Now that I had last year still stand - buy hey, at least we learned more about Sony's plans for cloud computing than we did from Microsoft.

I came away from the two press conferences feeling like Microsoft has only been playing catch up from it's initial launch problems, while Sony has actually been in development making the PS4 and it's devices better. Microsoft really needs to up it's game. My thoughts towards Nintendo? No change...

But it's really about the games right? There are still plenty of games on show that I'm looking forward too. Project Spark, Bloodborne, The Order 1886, Dead Island 2, The Witcher 3. And I'm really happy that both Sony and Microsoft are taking indie developers seriously. NoMan's Sky looks freaking amazing, but then it will no doubt see a PC release. In fact many of indie games shown are already available, or will be available, on other platforms. I've been playing BroForce for about 6 weeks. Plague Inc. has been on my tablet for about a year and Plague Inc. Evolved is already on Steam Early Access. Same as last year there were no exclusive games shown that get me excited enough to buy either console right now. I'm just not interested in Halo, Fable, and uncharted. Most games that caught my attention will likely have a PC release, and there aren't enough exclusives that I want to warrant putting the money down on an Xbox or PlayStation. Or at least with the current information provided - if Bloodborn or The Order 1886 turn out to be a must have titles then that and the PlayStation TV may be enough to push me into getting a PS4. The PS4 did have the most exclusives that took my interest by far.

But my favourite part of the show? The Doom 4 (or should that be just DOOM) teaser trailer. Yea it was CG, and it don't show any gameplay, and game had already been announced. But Doom is one of my favourite franchises. I play though Doom and Doom 2 maybe once a year. I finished my first play through of Doom with the Brutal Doom mod a few months ago (which is freaking awesome by the way), and I'm half way though Doom 2. And I really liked Doom 3. I'm one of a handful of people who felt that the flashlight was a great gameplay mechanic, and loved gloomy dark the atmosphere and metal soundtrack. In fact Doom 3 was the first game for which I upgraded my own computer to play, and got me into building my own rigs. 

Here's looking forward to QuakeCon, Doom beta key in hand!

Disney and the Star Wars Expanded Universe

(I started this post on May 4^th – so that’s something that can be said about having a baby, they suck down a lot of time…).

Disney's culling of the Start Wars extended universe (EU) came as a surprise to pretty much no one. No one except the guys of the recent Hate Bit Podcast, who were absolutely livid - particularly Razorfist.

Being a fan of Star Wars

I think many Star Wars fans can relate to my experience of Star Wars.

I lived and breathed Star Wars when I was a kid. I watched the film's at every opportunity. I used to get up at 6am to watch the Ewoks cartoon before school - and hunted out the Ewoks live action spin off films. Star Wars gear often made up a large part of my birthday and Christmas presents, and any money I had was often split between gaming and Star Wars stuff - when I was about 14 I worked out that my collection was worth over $1000. Games like X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Dark Forces and 'Star Wars' for Sega Master System absolutely blew my mind and are still among my favourite games and most treasured nostalgic memories. Countless hours were spent drawing space combat scenes, making my own star wars Lego designs, reading Star Wars books, reading about Star Wars online (after the internet actually became available that is) and playing Star Wars with my friends. There are lots of things that I was 'really into' during my childhood - Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Jurassic Park - but it was Star Wars that was the thing that I consistently enjoyed through the years.

But I haven't actually sat down to enjoy the film's the way I did as a child in years. And I desperately want too. One of my earliest memories is sitting on the couch watching A New Hope with my dad - who was himself a big fan. And I really want to share Star Wars with my daughter, in the same way that I enjoyed it growing up. So we could experience that amazement together. But the whole franchise has just been watered down to the point that enjoying it to the level I did as a kid is just impossible. Now I would consider myself a dedicated but casual fan.

It started off with the release of the 1997 special editions. I was pumped about these coming out. New digital enhancements, and new scenes? Hell yes! Then I saw them.... I can still remember my 12 years old self yelling at the TV (didn't get to see them at the movies... parents) that there is no way that Han Solo would step on Jaba the Hutts tail. And the God damned dancing scene in Jaba's palace. The bastardising of the original trilogy is still ongoing, and too this day the only copy of the special editions I own is the 2008 DVD, and only because it came with the theatrical versions as a bonus disc - as craptastic non-anamorphic as they are.

Like everyone though, it was the prequel films were the final nail in the coffin. I remember seeing Episode 1 in theatres back in 99 (when I was 15). Again I was totally psyched. And again I was completely let down. Darth Vader built C3P0? Obi Wan Kenobi worked with R2D2 decades before A New Hope? Poor cinematography and dialogue? And Jar Jar Binks? Then through the 2000s Star Wars was whored out as much as it could with crappy games, crappy books, and crappy merchandise flooding the market. By the time I was sitting in a theatre with the entire audience laughing at Darth Vader's 'nooooo' at the end of Episode 3 my passion for Star Wars was over.

Star Wars Expanded Universe

Tie Fighter - Greatest Star Wars game ever made

But anyway, the expanded universe. My experience with the EU has been mostly with games - X-Wing and Tie Fighter series, Rebel Assault, the Dark Forces series, Rogue Squadron.... And I completely agree with the guys on the Hate Bit Podcast that officially classifying all of the expanded universe as non-canon and taking the stories of Episodes 7-9 in a completely unique direction ignoring any previous EU material will devalue some great Star Wars games and books.

But the problem with the expanded universe is that it's a gigantic cluster fuck. George Lucas and LucasArts had the right of veto on all Star Wars licenses. Every story and every setting in the expanded universe got the green light from Lucas - and so in some way every licensed Star Wars product can be considered canon. Keeping track of all the sorry lines, characters, and technical details present in all the books, games, board games, card games, spin off series, D20 RPGs and toys (many of which contradict each other), and making sure that the upcoming movies don't contradict any of them and that all major plot points are considered would be absolutely impossible. Just considering the games and books of the EU when writing the new movies would be a nightmare. At some point someone’s favorite part of the expanded universe would need to be cut just so the movies could be made. Someone was always going to be pissed off. And where do you draw the line?

But this gets a while lot more complicated when you consider that the expanded universe, especially the games, is incredibly self referential and it would be almost impossible to remove some parts of the EU without impacting the others. Consider this - recently I've been repaying Jedi Academy. In this game you fight against Imperial Remnant troops, which suggests that Jedi Academy, and by extension the entire Dark Forces series, is set in Kevin J. Anderson's Darksaber universe. You could not keep Jedi Academy as canon without also keeping the rest of the Dark Forces saga which preceded it, and all the the other EU materials that have gone into the formation of the Imperal Remnant which the game is referencing.

Kyle Katarn as he appeared in Dark Forces

But it goes so much deeper than that. Kyle Katarn (of the Dark Forces series) appears in the X-Wing Miniatures Game, so for that game the Dark Forces saga, the Imperial Remnant, the Darksaber universe, and associated materials are canon. But the miniatures game also features ships from the X-Wing game series, making that series also part of the miniatures game's canon. 1994s Tie Fighter for DOS (the sequel to X-wing) features Admiral Thrawn indicating that X-Wing/Tie Fighter is set in Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy universe making that canon for the miniatures game as well. And the miniatures game also has ships from the Rebel Assault series.... Finally, just to top it off, the story of 1993s X-Wing contradicts the story of the original Dark Forces, and aspects of the Thrawn Trilogy and 1994s Tie Fighter have already been made non-canonical by the prequel films. And that's only scratching the surface...

Admiral Thrawn as he appeared in Tie Fighter

Keeping the Star Wars games canonical would require Disney to navigate a maze of poor storylines, one-off characters, contradictions, and referencing to source materials outside the games themselves. And would we have gotten a good movie trilogy out of it in the end? Doubtful. Leaving the games as canon was never going to happen. And given the complex and restrictive nature of the EU should never happen.

 

My Thoughts

George Lucas always maintained that he was not bound by the expanded universe. The EU was always licensed fan fiction that could be discarded at Lucas's whim. And at the end of the day I feel that Star Wars needs all the help it can get. We cannot have three more bad movies destroying the franchise. And if ignoring the expanded universe will allow the writers and Abrams to have full creative control for the production of the next film trilogy and we get a great core canon experience because of it then I'm all for it. Let them make the movies the way they need to be made, and we'll see what still fits from the expanded universe when they are done. Perhaps they'll even make an effort to preserve some of the better expanded universe materials.

And when it's all done I'm still going to enjoy playing X-Wing and Tie Fighter regardless of their canonical status.