Reflections

On February 26th, Mod Knox announced RuneScape’s first ever bonus XP event. It was to run on the weekend of March 12th, starting at 7:00 AM EST and running until the same time the following Monday.

The effects of this announcement were profound and widespread. In a matter of days, many popular items used in skill training (such as planks, herbs and summoning secondaries) became unbuyable on the Grand Exchange. Merchanting clans – and indeed, pretty much everybody – promptly jumped on the bandwagon, causing prices to spike in a dramatic fashion. This imbalance in the supply and demand of raw materials trickled down; soon, “essential” items such as potions were also bought out, crippling the ability of players to participate in PvP and other activities.

In a bid to hoard more supplies, however, many players began to sell off expensive items such as godswords and Bandos armour. This triggered a crash of sorts in the high-end market, causing many players to speculate on what the future has in store. What was notable, however, was the influx of discontinued items in the Grand Exchange; prior to the event announcement, traders often had to use “junk” in order to obtain them. There are two sides to this: although collectors were easily able to get something they want at a steep discount, said items became more heavily concentrated in the hands of wealthy players.

This state of affairs wouldn’t last for long, of course. About a week later, the market for training supplies began to cool down; it won’t be until the beginning of the actual event that things start to pick up again. Prices for high-end items took on a reversed course as people began to recognize that they were vastly undervalued.

Meanwhile, the RuneScape forums were raging with activity. Many players thought it was an awesome event and began preparing for it, even going so far as to use calculus to determine how much XP might be expected for a particular activity. Questions were thrown around left, right and center about what particular training methods were covered under the event. Others, however, had a negativistic view and stated that bonus XP devalued skills (in particular, summoning).

On the first day of the actual event, people quickly determined that the XP rate counter was decreasing faster than it should have been. Mod Nexus confirmed this in a forum thread, saying it was because of a rounding error in the math calculations. This meant that the curve leveled off at 110% normal experience approximately 3 hours faster than expected, throwing off many of the more meticulous plans for the day.

Despite this miscalculation, players were undeterred in their training. Areas such as Castle Wars and the Ourania Runecrafting Altar were flooded with skillers. At multiple points throughout the weekend, RuneScape peaked at over 180k people online. Such enthusiasm turned what is ordinarily dull training into a group activity, building relationships between players; it was sort of like a global skilling clan going to areas normally devoid of people. In the end, many ‘Scapers received a hefty experience boost in the skill(s) of their choice.

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So that’s pretty much what happened. Here’s a few of my thoughts on the event.

There’s no doubt that it was one of the most controversial announcements of the year. Although bonus XP events were commonplace in many other MMORPGs, this marks the first time such a thing has happened in RuneScape. Much of the debate centered around the “devaluing” of achievements prior to the weekend. In particular, summoning took the brunt of the criticism due to the design of the skill itself; most of the time spent is on charm gathering rather than pouch making, so it was possible to save months of playtime (rather than the ~5 or so hours with most other skills). Herblore took second place due to the vast amounts of money that could be saved in the process of gaining upwards of ~4 million XP over the weekend.

What’s the big deal? Well, RuneScape is largely a time-based game (more so than most); there are few things that players can’t do if they put in sufficient effort. As a result, the main thing distinguishing players is the number of hours spent in-game (way overgeneralizing here). To put it into perspective: think of time as some sort of currency and a government deciding to introduce more of it into the economy – causing hyperinflation to occur.

It’s essentially an egotistical argument; the idea boils down to “I worked for my skills the hard way, so everyone else should too”. In a game like RuneScape, where higher levels give substantially larger advantages, it becomes easy for players to point fingers at the bonus XP event and say that it nullifies their competitive advantage over others. For example, let’s use the pack yak as an example: it requires level 96 summoning and provides a massive advantage in the form of extra inventory space (and long-range banking). Those who have gotten the yak prior to the event were able to cash in on their efforts, staying at boss fights and whatnot longer than their lower-leveled counterparts. However, there may be those who have, say, level 85-90 summoning who didn’t have enough resources to reach level 96, but had enough to achieve half of that. The bonus weekend helps to put the pack yak in their line of sight, making it possible for more people to compete with others who have already done so.

Now, I’m a relatively casual player. Although I’ve been “around” longer than probably 95% of the population today, I haven’t done many noteworthy things. For example, I’ve never hit maxed level in any skill thus far, and have no plans on doing so. My reason? I dislike grinding and am happy with ~90% of the benefits in a third of the time. Basically, my opportunity cost for gaining the last little bit of extra advantages are too high. And yeah, being a mathie I have a habit of calculating efficiency rates for various activities in the game. So what draws me into RuneScape? Questing is probably the primary reason. It’s also one of the few games that I’m capable of multitasking well with when I’m knocking heads together in Guild Wars or programming “the next big thing”. For someone like me who pretty much tries everything to avoid straight-up grind, anything that increases efficiency per time spent is likely to be more good than bad (just as a sidenote, I went for summoning, construction and hunter last weekend).

There’s a couple of arguments in favour of the event that I haven’t really seen yet. First of all, it was sort of a money-sink. In the case of summoning, many players had to buy shards from the shop, removing gold from the game. It’s no big secret that inflation has been running rampant over the last couple years so every little bit helps. For other materials, it helped to decentralize wealth as people with a lot of money bought things from those who supply them (merchants notwithstanding). Secondly, an increased number of higher-leveled players can actually help the game. Think of it this way: if more people are able to make an attempt at the God Wars Dungeon or the Corporeal Beast, then prices of the more expensive items may drop into affordable range.

It’s been my experience that forums aren’t a very good way to judge feedback to an in-game event. The responses tend to be skewed towards the dissenting side and for good reason – happy players tend to be the ones actually playing the content. I suspect given the amount of activity last weekend that it was a huge success, so I wouldn’t be surprised if another similar announcement comes up in the future.

I appreciate a gaming company who’s willing to try out controversial things so I have a few suggestions for Jagex. It’d be nice to give less notice should a repeat occur, as the Grand Exchange was essentially destabilized for a month. Using a limited subset of activities might be interesting too, as that would herd players to various areas (this, of course, only works if the activity isn’t based around zero-sum like mining).

Anyway, this post has gotten a bit out of hand so I’ll wrap things up for now.