The Making of an RSM Article

After one month of publishing at WordPress I’ve decided to let you readers in on how I come about writing articles, guides and more.

I’m going to start out with guides. As you’ve probably noticed, most of my guides have what I call “Blurbs” at the beginning. These are mainly just little snippets of info about the skill that can be useful to people who are new to the skill or want to look into training it or getting 99. These “blurbs” make the guides open with information that gets straight to the point about the skill, leaving the rest open for more general tips or training guidelines.
Whenever possible, I try to include XP/hour or “x number of item to reach x level” descriptions for each step of the way to 99. This helps players plan their goals without having to use a calculator. Including the loss or profit gain is also helpful in aiding players to how much they will lose and if different, more cost-efficient methods are available.

Articles can be a little different. As you can imagine, I can brainstorm for quite some time on what to write about, as a weekly article can sometimes be nerve-wracking. I try to write about interesting topics effecting the RuneScape or RSM community, but sometimes I’ll go “cheap” on you guys and release a post detailing a new guide instead.
Articles that are fun to write, like my book review or “A Guide to n00bs,” will often make it onto the site because my general idea is that something fun to write should be something fun to read. Feedback from the Twitter community also helps on making article decisions.
Going back to what is fun to write, I will oftentimes start writing an article, get maybe a few paragraphs in or a page’s worth in Microsoft Word and decide if I like the article. If I do I’ll keep writing. If I don’t, I will usually save the document and brainstorm something else, or find a way to make the article more entertaining.

Update reviews are probably my favorite posts to pen – erm, keyboard. I try to release update reviews the day of the update’s release on RuneScape, but sometimes the article may not get up until Wednesday of that week, but preferably not any later. I use my own rating systems for the articles, a description of which follows:
Usefulness of this update: This basically just is a rating of how useful the update is in game or on the website from my point of view. If the update isn’t very coherent or just plain isn’t useful/is bad the rating will be low.
Practicality of this update: This rating shows how practical the update is. Was it foreshadowed in a Developer’s Blog or Behind the Scenes? If so, how long ago? If the answer to the former question is “yes,” then the rating will be high. If the update is something players have wanted for a long time, the rating will be high.
How much I like this update: This is basically just a representation of, well, how much I like the update. Obviously I’m free-to-play, so if an update has no new content for me then the rating will be low. However, updates like the rune energy update, dungeon maps, animations pack 1, etc. that benefit free players as equally as members will receive high ratings.
Overall: This rating is simply an average of the three other ratings. It’s just a total representation of the week’s update in a simple x/5 rating.

My newly launched series of Concepts articles has my excited because it will give me a new medium every week to express what I think should be added into the game to all my readers. These articles will almost always make it onto the site because they are fun to write, mostly because I can just dream up anything I want and write about it as if it’s been implemented into the game, or just provide a list of theoretical updates much like I would envision would appear in the In Other News section.

Time for a little statistical viewpoint of things! Obviously, I get more views on days when I post new articles or guides mostly through my Twitter followers. I also get quite a few hits from search results alone, and the day that my Twitter buddy @Linkbuilder linked to my very first post, my Magic guide, on his own site (www.rskillers.info), the view jumped.
The peak of views each day has exceeded 40, something that I’m pretty happy about. The average day has 18-25 views, still a high amount by my standards. So far, over the course of one month, I have received fairly formidable 500+ total views of www.thersmasters.wordpress.com. So thanks to all of you regular readers who have bookmarked the site and visit on a regular basis.

All that being said, I think it’s time once again to plug guest writers. I haven’t had any emails at all so far since setting up thersmasters@gmail.com, so send in any guides or articles for this blog and with any luck I’ll put them up, obviously crediting the author in full. But please, no copy and pasting from sites like RuneHQ, Zybez, etc.

And just a little preview of what’s to come…
•    This blog will soon be part of www.runeguys.com. Being a staff writer for the Rune Guys is an underlying part of this blog and I think that having my blog hosted with the site will drive more traffic both ways.
•    Quest guides! Having conquered skill guide I now plan to move on to quest guides. Hopefully these guides will help you finish quests and reap their rewards; currently I have none in development, but I plan to make my very own guides for most, if not all, free-to-play quests.

RuneScape: The Official Handbook Book Review

To start off, I’m going to explain myself. I did not buy this book. And I would not recommend that anyone reading this would purchase it, unless they have $6.99 USD to blow and they want a few laughs. But even for lower-leveled players buying this book is not recommended. This book was published in 2006. It wasn’t really publicized by JaGeX all that much, nor is it mainstream on the JaGeX Store.

And I understand why.

This book, when read, feels like you’re listening to a friend or some random nerd telling you about the game. Here’s the excerpt from the back cover:

Welcome to the magical world of RuneScape – the online adventure game that has become a worldwide sensation! When you enter RuneScape, you become a part of a fantastic world – one where warriors, wizards, pirates, and princes roam. Where you can go on unforgettable quests and discover far-off lands all while making friends from around the world. This handbook outlines everything you’ll need to know about the free version of the game. From learning basic skills to mastering quests, to getting to know all of RuneScape’s characters and creatures, with the help of this guide, you’ll be a RuneScape expert in no time.

It’s written in a way that really makes you want to puke. RuneScape’s supposed age it’s geared for is teenagers; do you think teenagers browse the kid’s gaming section at the library, where I found this book? To start off on my ranting, I’m first going to explain a few things. I’ve read this book before, put that was when I was gawking at seeing the level 60 Woodcutting requirement to cut yew trees. Now that I can basically do everything in the free game except cast teleblock and go in the Runecrafting Guild I can look at this book in disgust. I’m also going to point out that I’m a neat freak, which any budding graphic designer should be, so the fonts and colors of this book were poorly designed. It’s trying to go for a “rustic” look, but with blurry pictures of monsters that aren’t even up to the graphics detail at the time of press. The people over at Scholastic probably took not even a month to work on this book. It’s like one of those crappy-looking guides you’ll find if you search “RuneScape” in eBay.

Another gripe I have about this book is that the author probably took the job and created a RuneScape character on the spot. Quest Points are referred to as “QPs” and if you have multiple coins they are called “GPs”. For the description of a giant spider, this book advises you to “Attack it – if it’s a level 2, that is.” Yet another thing wrong with this book is that it covers the extremes. Out of the monsters featured in it, greater demons are listed as the highest level. The next highest besides a lesser demon is a level 57 ice warrior. At lower levels it is recommended to kill, cook and sell chickens to the Lumbridge general store to make money.

Now, I know that RuneScape has received countless updates in the three years since this book’s release and a revision would be nice. Obviously, the removal of the Wilderness alone could prompt a revision. However, if JaGeX really wants to sell books, could they hire actual writers like all the other RuneScape bloggers and I to put some blurbs in? Basically, this book is for not really anybody. I picked it up the first time because I had just started the game and I picked it up again because I had nothing else to read.

Once again, it feels like Scholastic hired someone with no knowledge of the game, which is insulting to those of us who know enough about RuneScape to write our own guides! This book is also extremely short. There is no discussion on the best ways to train skills or combat, the actual spells you can cast with Magic or even how much XP you get from mining a given rock or cutting a given log, which is not that difficult as adding another column to a book is not extremely time-consuming. The pictures are low-quality and blurry, and the writing is oftentimes very kiddy and, excuse me, nooby.

JaGeX, if you want people to take your game seriously, just don’t publish any more books like this. It makes RuneScape feel like Club Penguin or something. Should I buy this book? Only for laughs; if you want an actual, serious guide for RuneScape, there’s a lot better ones out there, specifically ones here, on RSKillers.info, Zybez.net and RuneHQ.com. My conclusion is that I think JaGeX should let fansites do their thing and write the guides. Purchase the rights to the guides or ask to use them if you want to make a book. Fansites are great – I wrote an entire article on them. They’ve got the info. We’ve got the logic to look at that info.

As always, follow me on Twitter (@Avalon512), check out the Rune Guys website (http://www.runeguys.com) and thanks for reading.

Geography of RuneScape

The journey of getting from one place to another in RuneScape is often shortcutted by using teleports, magic carpets, etc., to reach the destination. But realistically the distance between the two places is actually an extremely small fraction than what it should be.
For example, one can transfer from a climate of ice in the Wilderness to the desert region of Al-Kharid in a matter of two or three thousand steps. Assuming that a step equals 1.5 meters, then that means that the entire continent of RuneScape is 3-5 km in length, which should be the distance between two given cities! A player can also walk between the cities of Falador and Varrock in a matter of 150 steps or so, or not even 1/4 of a kilometer! And the fact that both of these cities are capitals for their respective kingdoms doesn’t help.

Now, obviously, making the dimensions of RuneScape more realistic would make it extremely hard for players without the right teleports to get anywhere in an amount of time less than a few hours or even days and teleport tablets would be in overwhelming demand. But I’m not here to rant that this should be implemented. Instead, I’m taking a look at the difference between Gielinor and Earth, which may (and probably is) seem like an absurd compare/contrast but changes one’s view of playing the game.

It would be pretty stupid to make a big deal about the geography of a fantasy world, but I’m doing so anyway. And when you actually look at and browse the world map RuneScape resembles something sort of like a continent.
To the north there are ice caps and volcanic regions, much like the volcanoes that have been discovered underneath our very own receding Arctic ice shelf. If Gielinor had less water than us it would fit very well.
To the south, obviously, we have the desert region. This much is obvious, but it can only mean one thing; that regions such as Al-Kharid are around the equator of Gielinor and, hence, there is much more land to the south of the desert region we know now. The only flaw of this area is the fact that the only thing that separates the deciduous realms of Lumbridge Forest and the harsh deserts is a gate wall. What, did Lumbridge just turn on the air conditioning on their side and pull out a few watering cans? This detail is the only flaw to this otherwise realistic area.
Again, much like our own earth, there is a temperate deciduous belt of trees below the northern regions of Gielinor. This “taiga of RuneScape” is a belt of evergreens (quite literally) north of Varrock and Falador. Although it is a quite small area of forest it adds to the creditability of the area as being realistic.

The world of Gielinor is ever changing. The fact that the part of it we know now is obviously only a small fraction of the whole part means that, hopefully, we will receive updates about the rest of RuneScape and be able to view Gielinor as a whole (3D World Map, anyone?).

Thanks for reading. Be sure to rate the article, leave comments, follow me on Twitter (@Avalon512), check out the Rune Guys website (http://www.runeguys.com) and email me submissions, suggestions and staff application forms to thersmasters@gmail.com.

RuneScape Fansites

Fansites in RuneScape

The influence of fansites in RuneScape is tremendous. The databases of monsters, items and, probably the most common used, quests, are any RuneScaper’s handbook of nearly all the information one could ask for. Very few players who are aware of the existance of guides to quests do not use them. I have used quest guides from sites such as RuneHQ, Rune Tips and Zybez on almost all of my quests that I have done being aware of their existance, so much so that I can barely imagine doing quests without them. With sites like the RuneScape Wiki melded in, letting non-staff players write and put in any information they see fit has led to a new information overload that is my main source of training, moneymaking and questing knowledge. Browsing the RuneScape Wiki is an addictive experience because one article leads to another, with internal links often leading you to topics you hadn’t thought about before but now know much more about.

Some of the bigger sites, such as RuneHQ and Zybez, overshadow newer or less-used sites that are very good but can be unable to rise up against those huge monsters of fansites. These sites, such as RSBANB, the Rune Guys and many others may not possess the raw community power and information that the RuneScape Wiki or RuneHQ might have but are pioneers in different ways (for example, RSBANDB’s Twitter-like RuneWire is a creative take on social networking).

Purpose

Before the game update of the Dungeon Maps being added to the World Map, fansites were the place to go to find out how to navigate the Chaos Tunnels or to find what mine has the most coal rocks in it. But I suppose the real question is “Do we need these fansites?” And for me the answer is absolutely yes. They are powerhouses in information and guidance that even the actual RuneScape website cannot offer.

One of the examples here is calculators. I use Rune Tips for almost all of my calculations, save the ones I do by myself when away from a computer. How many holy symbols will I need to craft to reach 60 Crafting? 3,448. How many willow logs do I have left until 70 Woodcutting? 1,008. Did you know that I need 3 Defense levels to reach level 85 combat? Not before I looked it up. Calculators are very innovative and much more reliable than just buying a couple thousand raw sharks and seeing how much XP youll get towards 99 Cooking. I could go on and on with more examples, but I think you get the idea.

Acception

Recently, JaGeX put up a “recognized fansites” list on the RuneScape forums with a list of the fansites that they say are pretty good. This shows that they are just as excited about their fan base as every other RuneScape player is.

Another example of how prominent fansites are in RuneScape is the recommendations from other players. Just recently I met a player who was wondering how long it would take him to get 80 Woodcutting. I asked him how many willow logs he knew he needed for level and he didn’t know. So I pointed him towards Rune Tips and inputted the numbers. I told him the number and he asked how that helped him. I told him to divide that number by 28 and that’s the number of loads he needs to complete. Then he should time how long one full load takes and multiply that by the number of loads he needs to complete rounded up. That’s just one example; it’s not an uncommon sight to see players referring others to fansites they use to tell how they got their money, leveled their skill so fast, etc.

Yet another example is stat, competition and goal signatures. These are very widely used in forums as an opportunity to show off one’s stats overall or how close they are to reaching a certain skill level. I myself have three set up on the Rune Guys Forum; a stat signature from RSig.eu and two goal signatures for 60 Crafting and 1000 total, both from Draynor.net. I will almost always put up a signature for a level that I’m shooting for on those forums both as a reminder to tell myself how close I am and to show others what I’m doing on RuneScape.

In the End…

I feel that using fansites is great. The time and money people spend creating content, hosting the actual site and planning events is very impressive and that they deserve my usage of the site. Here’s just a partial list of some of the fansites I use for various purposes:

• Rune Tips (http://www.tip.it/runescape) – I use this site for calculators for my different skills and skill guides.
• RSig (http://rsig.eu) and Draynor.net (http://www.draynor.net) – For stat and goal signatures.
• RuneHQ (http://www.runehq.com) – For quest and skill guides (mostly quests).
• The RuneScape Wiki (http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/RuneScape_Wiki) – For just any general information I might need.

Overall, fansites are an awesome and I think that they are an amazing piece of work by everyone who has helped create and manage them.

Remember that I am now accepting applications for new writers, so email me at thersmasters@gmail.com if you are interested. And, as always, follow me on Twitter (@Avalon512), add me on RuneScape (Avalon512) and check out the Rune Guys Podcast!