Hi all, I have managed to gather all the questions from the AMA reddit which were responded by Jagex moderators. This should be a lot convenient. I may edit it soon to make the names stand out. Bear in mind the following usernames are reddit usernames, not RuneScape usernames. Bear in mind, there's up to 250 questions! Enjoy!

gJAYg

Question 1: Why can't you steal from the gem stall in al kharid next to the gnome glider?

JagexAsh

Answer: I suspect it's because the stall turned up in RS Classic long before the introduction of Ardougne and its thieving stalls, and no-one ever had a pressing reason to go back and make the Al Kharid stall thievable.

Magnaboy

Question 2: If you personally could add anything to the game with Jagex/Players not able to interfere, just what you personally would want added - what would it be? Also when is ice poseidon being modded

ModJohnC

Answer: Sailing Skill

ModMatK

Answer: I would add a proper clan league combat system

NavajoWarrior

Question 3: I been permabanned from the forums for about 7 years. I grew up. Can I be unbanned?

Edit: I'm still permanently banned.

ModMatK

Answer: rsn?

Dedod_2

Question 4: Will the possible purchase of Jagex Studios result in major changes to osrs?

ModMatK

Answer: That is very unlikely, OSRS works because of how it is and no one will want to change that.

Earlstar

Question 5: How much madness was occurring when Durial launched the Runescape Massacre way back? Was there just a collective jaw drop amongst the RS team or was there any indicators that something bad was about to happen?

Looking back it's honestly cool someone was able to pull that off, made everything feel so real haha, plus the soundtrack Planet Hell was made famous. Respect to you guys really listening to the community and bringing it back, the memories with that era are so cherished that even the creators wouldn't be able to feel the player's sentiments.

JagexAsh

Answer: It was night time here. The only people in the dev side of the office were me and Mod Slake, since we'd been called to come in and fix it. He wasn't exactly a RuneScape dev, since he mostly did sysadmin work, so it didn't really have the same emotional impact on him that it would on a member of the RS community or staff. And I was focusing on programming things, and didn't stop to check my expression.

POH was a complicated project, and had a few teething issues already, so it wasn't massively surprising that something bigger popped up.

HyperWaterDog

Question 6: Who at the Jagex team originially came up with the idea or finaly gave into the idea of having Oldschool Servers? As far as I can remember players had been asking ever since the wilderness removal(and trade limit) without any response/support from the Jmods.

Then suddenly out of nowhere there was a huge pol which got massive support, did individual players like so wreck3d have a huge role in his?

Thank you again for bringing back Oldschool Servers I never thought it would happen but it did.

ModMatK

Answer: I don't know who heard the community first. At some point, some one just asked the question, "what if we do that?" and it snowballed from there. Certainly players like So Wreck3d and all the others that campaigned had a huge impact on making that one person ask that one difficult question.

JagexAsh

Answer: That decision came all the way down from the top - maybe Mods MMG or Pips. If they were talking to specific famous players about it, I don't know the details.

Splitting the community in two was a very big deal; we'd not tried anything like that before, and we had a legitimate concern that we might end up with two communities that were both too small to flourish. Anyway, it worked, and I'm very glad of it.

stininja

Question 7: Do you have any advice for acquiring a girlfriend using Runescape?

ModMatK

Answer: Yeah, don't bother. Gets in the way of more interesting things.

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Step 1: Dance for money Step 2: buying gf Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit

ModJohnC

Answer: RuneScape pick up lines!

Holmborn

Question 8: What are your thoughts on Blizzards approach to Legacy Servers for World of Warcraft and the Nostalrius incident?

ModMatK

Answer: Without knowing the reasoning behind Blizzard's approach it is very difficult to have any objective opinion. All I can do is offer an opinion based on what we have seen on OSRS. When we first discussed the launch of our legacy servers we looked at all the risks involved such as whether it cannibalise our existing game, whether we could sustain the project technically, whether we could sustain the community and all sorts of things. We pulled the data all together and made a decision based on what we thought would happen. I would imagine Blizzard has done the same thing but their data is leading them to a different conclusion than us, after all the games are very different.

We have seen a huge success with Old School with over 2.5 million members playing since it launched 3 years ago and nearly 7 million people playing in total. So, for us the demand is certainly there.

Mod_Kieren

Answer: I would love to see them do it.

For us it has clearly been a massive success, and ultimately, the best feeling when being part of a games development team is seeing the players happy.

Whether it works for them, or what their internal structures are, I don't know - so who knows if they can pull it off.

The situation strikes me as fairly similar, in that there were a large amount of players who were disengaging with Runescape 3 as they didn't like the direction the game was taking (RS3 added a new combat system and interface etc). They wanted an old version so the company listened and provided it.

ZeldenGM

Question 9: How much of the conversation revolved around financial sustainability? Did launching the 07scape servers have any cost/risk involved?

ModMatK

Answer: That of course was the biggest risk. Fortunately the overheads were not huge, we had plenty of servers waiting and the initial team were able to be reassigned if it was a flop.

iMini

Question 10: Could you expand at all upon what information you gathered regarding the cannibalisation of the RS community? I'd have thought that a lot of people playing OSRS are older players who had quit RS by the time OSRS was released.

ModMatK

Answer: The worry was that if players moved to OSRS we would lose income from MTX. What would have happened if everyone moved over and never came back? However, after looking at how people engaged with MTX what their habits were etc, we saw that risk was not huge.

Point_Less

Question 11: What percentage of that 2.5m were bots?

ModMatK

Answer: Less than 10%

Bc_Pwnage

Question 12: How much of an impact do streamers and other popular people within the Oldschool Runescape community make on certain updates such as (seasonal) Deadman Mode?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: The streamers add an awful lot to the community, providing entertainment while people play the game, or while they do something else entirely. Twitch has been a massively growing platform for Old School Runescape and it is fantastic to see, drawing in attention to the game and getting people to think 'hey, there's that game I played 10 years ago, isn't that cool!'

In terms of making decisions on updates, streamers opinions are important, as they are often knowledgeable players - however we treat opinions from any other knowledgeable players as equal. Often streamers have much increased visibility with their comments and ideas, as their fanbase will also start to shout about it.

ModJohnC

Answer: We try to listen to all members of our community, now obviously popular streamers can often have a louder voice but we don't usually let that impact our decision making.

FighterNumChan

Question 13: I remember when the servers originally launched, thinking "This is cool but it will be dead in 6 months", and wound up being pleasantly surprised.

Is anyone at Jagex surprised about the success of OSRS?

Jagex_Weath

Answer: I don't think there's anyone at Jagex that isn't surprised at how successful OldSchool has been.

genet1c

Question 14: Do you ever look back towards the end of 2007 when the wilderness and free trade was removed and think it might have been a bad idea? What were the pros and cons of removing it?

JagexAsh

Answer: Frequently. I had to work on some of that, after all, and it wasn't the most fun period in my career. Thing is, the internet wasn't the same then as it is now - while Jagex has all manner of measures to protect against fraudulent card payments now, there were fewer options in 2006-7. (When did 'Verified by VISA' even get invented?!) So the fraudulent payments made by bot-operators were giving Jagex such critical problems that we might have been truly sunk if we hadn't done something drastic. At a time when 70% of members paid by card, if we'd lost the ability to take card payments, we'd have lost a lot more players than we actually did when we removed free trade.

Now, that's not to say it was well done, though. The manager directing RS content in those days hoped that Bounty Hunter would replace 1v1 PKing and Clan Wars would replace multiplayer PvP. However, no formal minigame - least of all one with no rewards! - could reasonably replace the emergent gameplay of the Wilderness. If we had instead gone with features that let players play in their own way, and given what rewards we could within the trade limits, it might have helped a lot.

Plus the communications were poor too. We never told players why we'd done it. There's reasons for that, but it certainly didn't help.

ModMatK

Answer: Yep, I always thought it was a mistake and I'm glad that we rectified it.

cortwilly

Question 15: Do you take responsibility for the decreased risk of unplanned pregnancies and STD's for Runescape's users? Should Planned Parenthood recommend Runescape as an effective form of contraception?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: It's all part of the membership package.

iDrink2Much

Question 16: Considering the success of Old School Runescape so far, do you guys see the OSRS team expanding much more?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Even since I started back in July 2015, we have seen the team expand. I love seeing the team get bigger, but we are taking it naturally and gradually but seem to be constantly recruiting nowadays. :)

http://www.jagex.com/careers/jobs shows all the companies vacancies, which would include any for Old School Runescape.

ModJohnC

Answer: The team gets bigger as per our needs. If we find ourselves struggling to manage with what we have we look at the options and whether or not another person is the solution. We won't ever just throw 20 more people on the team for the sake it.

JagexMaz

Answer: Whilst we do need more resources in some areas, I personally hope it doesn't expand too much. I believe that our small team is what makes us able to be as responsive as we are to talking to you guys with a unified voice and getting you the updates you want as quickly as we can.

KeziaTML

Question 17: what is your policy regarding hiring remote employees?

JagexMaz

Answer: We do not have a remote working policy, we need to talk and interact with our colleagues - it's a part of what makes the job fun and creative.

Killoah

Question 18: How is the friendship of the team outside of work?

JagexAsh

Answer: Pretty darn good. The healthier members of the team like to visit gyms together, while the less health-conscious staff (such as myself) frequently go out for food & drink.

ModJohnC

Answer: For me, my team is part of my family, I spend upwards of 40 hours a week with these guys and girls which isn't par fromhow much time I spend with my partner. I'd like to think we all get along as colleagues and some of us have closer friendships beyond the office, but not as the same group of people.

Mod_Kieren

Answer: I think as far as teams go in offices, we are probably one of the closest. I expect this may come across on livestreams and elsewhere, we joke around with one another and have a lot of fun too.

In my opinion this contributes massively to how well we all work together, and it really pleases me how fast we can turn updates around. :)

RG-Tato

Question 19: Are there going to be memes in Monkey Madness II?

JagexJed

Answer: Rest assured Monkey Madness II will be a meme-free piece of content.

ModJohnC

Answer: MM2 will remain meme free.

ThrowawayFourtySixty

Question 20: What are your personal thoughts about diverting from RS3 lore?

I think most of you are against it, but that may be just to keep the continuity, however, a fair few of us players wouldn't mind new quests going ways in which Runescape didn't :)

Mod_Kieren

Answer: I wouldn't personally mind us treading over their lore a little, I think it can restrict us in certain areas from what we do with the content.

With that said, going down our own road I feel can be far more interesting and exciting, and I expect many players may get upset that the lore crosses over. We try to make the 2 games fit together as much as possible - without contradictions.

JagexAsh

Answer: There's more than enough scope for us to write stories in OSRS that don't conflict with RuneScape's lore as revealed in RS3 or other RuneScape products. Such as Monkey Madness II, the forthcoming new quest :)

JagexMaz

Answer: I think we have plenty of space to expand on areas that RS3 hasn't already. Why reinvent a wheel that's already been made, when we can make ourselves something entirely new?

Acropolips

Question 21: So you going to tell us what Mod Reach did yet or what?

JagexAsh

Answer: Abuse of access to Jagex systems. We know lots of people are curious about it, but the matter's private to him, so it'd be unfair for me to share full details.

ModJohnC

Answer: Nope. :P

Hitler_had_OK_art

Question 22: Is Reach himself allowed to speak about it? Are there NDAs involved? Please Ash, I need my gossip fix and dead man gossip is drying up.

JagexAsh

Answer: He may not want to publish a load of info that could make it harder for him to get jobs in future. Personally I hope things go okay for him - we'd worked together on various projects before OSRS, and I was very disappointed not to have the opportunity to work with him for many more years.

ManChild9

Question 23: Do you think interacting with the player-base and having a vote on new content could become the norm for MMORPGs in a few years time?

ModMatK

Answer: Talking to many other publishers and game developers, I am seeing the importance of community becoming more and more integral to their business strategy. I see democratised development as the way forward.

ModJohnC

Answer: I think community driven decision making is becoming more and more of a contributing factor to development throughout the industry but I can't see many publishers taking it to such an extent of voting for everything like we do.

Shelldunk

Question 24: What're your thoughts on the no EXP waste, efficiency mentality in-game? And what're your thoughts on the competitive skilling scene today (Lynx Titan) in comparison to back in the day (Zezima, N0valyfe)?

Keep up the good work, team.

JagexAsh

Answer: I had a request recently to remove an animation from a skilling activity so that players could do the activity faster and improve their XP rate. I'm not keen on that kind of thing. Clicking a button and receiving XP at the optimal rate may be the focus of many players - which is fair enough - but ultimately this is meant to be a fantasy game rather than a spreadsheet, so I prefer to have it look like one.

ModMatK

Answer: I don't play any game for max efficiency reasons. However, I can understand why people do. The reason for playing games is different for everyone and I am pleased we can accommodate such a diverse community.

ModJohnC

Answer: Having been a part of this community for a large portion of my RS career, it's great to see it thriving. I think the key differences between now and the zezima days the way social interaction has evolved and enhanced gameplay. Back then you were limited to IRC & Teamspeak and the player base was much younger and less willing to utilise these communication channels. Nowadays you have twitch, twitter & reddit which makes sharing and discussing new efficient methods much easier and we have a lot more players able to dedicate long periods of time to playing the game and competing at the top ranks.

Killoah

Question 25: How has Mod Archie adapted to British Culture?

JagexAsh

Answer: We made a list of required viewing. Monty Python, Blackadder, etc. He's doing fine. Doesn't seem to like the freaky sausages I bring into work, but they're not actually British culture so that's no biggie.

ModJohnC

Answer: Tbh aside from the odd funny word or apologizing a little often you wouldn't know he wasn't british.

Mod_Archie

Answer: I don't like a lot of their food (I'm not a fan of curry or anything spicy for that matter). The OSRS team has been overwhelmingly welcoming and it's probably a once a week thing when someone takes a double look at me after I speak, realizing I don't sound like them. Also driving on the wrong side of the road and all the damn roundabouts took a while to get used to but I think I've got it down now. :)

WolfAteLamb

Question 26: I no longer play the game (maybe that will change one day) but just wanted to say thanks for all the great content you still produce on your channel.

Despite not playing I still find myself wandering to ChrisArchieProds for some good laughs when I'm just browsing Youtube.

All the best, Arch.

Mod_Archie

Answer: Cheers dude

TheLittleMoa

Question 27: What was the reaction to Mod Reach's firing last year? Obviously content was delayed slightly, mainly Zeah but what was your reactions to it?

JagexAsh

Answer: I'd worked with Reach back in 2012, when Old School RuneScape was just an idea on internal staff forums (supported strongly by Reach himself), and we'd got on well. He was very much my favourite QA tester to work with, and we continued to work well together when OSRS was created. He also brought a lot of vision to the team, even if he wasn't always so enthusiastic about turning it into a detailed plan that we could develop. So I was very disappointed not to be working with him on OSRS for many years to come. Of course, I also like the staff we've hired to replace him...

ModMatK

Answer: Mainly sadness and disappointment. We felt we were let down. But things have progressed so much since then and we are in a great place.

ModJohnC

Answer: Actually it really didn't impact our major releases at all, we just had a couple of lighter content updated in the immediate weeks following. As for my reaction, I was actually on holiday at the time when Mat called to inform me what was going on, it was of course a little shocking but that was it, just adapt and overcome.

TropicLove

Question 28: what do you think about lynx titan?

ModJohnC

Answer: He's just an unstoppable force isn't he? Second to 5.2b on RS and absolutely miles ahead of everyone in OSRS, can't help but admire the dedication.

JagexAsh

Answer: It's really quite humbling to see someone dedicate so much effort to playing our game, and it's an encouragement for us to keep putting in the effort ourselves to make the game all that it can be for its players.

ArcaneCat

Question 29: Do you see OSRS expanding over the years or declining?

JagexAsh

Answer: When we started in February 2013, the conventional wisdom was that we'd be around for about 6 months, then everyone would lose interest and drift away, and OSRS would be closed. That's why the initial announcements on prices always came with a caveat of "won't change for at least a year". But at the end of 2013 player numbers were increasing rapidly, and we've now got more members than we had in the initial launch rush.

While nothing in this transient world is eternal or immutable, Old School RuneScape is trending strongly upwards rather than downwards.

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Hard to predict many years into the future, but the last year, we grew massively - we currently have more members than Old School Runescape has ever had, even at launch with the massive hype surrounding the poll.

I do jolly well hope we manage to carry on growing, and I think we are in the best place to do so! I feel we're on a really good path, knowing what the community wants, and coming up with new innovative ideas such as Deadman Mode really does help with this. We think beyond what is normally done in the traditional MMO.

zMattz

Question 30: When Jagex initially launched the poll for Old School and it passed, did you all think you'd still be working on OSRS this far down the line or did you think it would die out within a year and you'd be back on the RS3 team (or other project(s))?

ModMatK

Answer: I think Jagex expected it last 6 months at the most... I secretly wished to be working on it for years glad it panned out the way it did.

ModJohnC

Answer: Only Mat & Ash can answer this one. The other two devs from the initial launch were Nexus, whom returned to work on RS and Reach whom is no longer with the company.

I was the first direct hire for OS in January 2014 and I didn't think for an instant that the game could ever cease to be a thing.

Mere_Glim

Question 31: who, not whom

Edit: Where have you worked before Jagex?

ModJohnC

Answer: I had a spell in wealth management and first line IT Support.

ChuckAtlas

Question 32: Mod Mat K, how did you end up in Jagex?

ModMatK

Answer: My wife saw the job advertised in the local paper, we both played the game so she applied and didn't get the job. She told me to apply and I did get the job.

Jagex_Weath

Answer: To this day, she has never forgiven him

goldenchase23

Question 33: Noticing inactivity regarding bot banning that could be pretty easily accomplished - for instance regarding the anti-dragon shield requiring 32 QP.

When will this be polled? Why aren't actions like these taken quicker? Does it have to do with the fact that bots pay membership too? Can you address the theories that bots are granted about a month and a day of time to play in order to get that second payment in?

Jagex_Weath

Answer: A large amount of the "bots" that you see at areas such as dragons and wyverns are actually gold farmers playing by hand. They're typically running lots of accounts at the same time so their behavior can see very bot like. Although these accounts do get banned, it can take a lot longer for them to get picked up, as they're not using a bot client.

The theory that we let them play for a month and a day is totally false, we often ban accounts the day that they add membership and obviously a huge number of free to play accounts get banned daily too.

I know the quest point requirement has been noted and hopefully we'll be able to get it into a poll in the near future.

Brinsor

Question 33: What arm thing, homie?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Listen, dood.

ya_boy_barn 18

Question 34: What're each of your favourite activities in-game (PvM, PvP, skilling, minigames etc)?

ModMatK

Answer:

PKing

Surgeboy99

Question 35: I haven't played runescape since back in 2003 or so. Can i still waste ample amounts of time fishing for lobsters?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Of course you can!

WadeeRS

Question 36: What's the reason our community manager hasn't tweeted for almost 3 weeks?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: I've been taking on some different/new responsibilities in recent weeks (the marketing side of things) and I've dropped off on Twitter because of this. I'll be back tweeting from today!

WeededDragon1

Question 37: With Blizzard recently shutting down the largest legacy private server for World of Warcraft, what do you think their actions should be going forward? There is clearly a demand for legacy World of Warcraft servers. I know that OldSchool Runescape started in a similar way. A private server called 2006Scape gained a lot of traction and Jagex shut them down; however, Jagex offered to bring back official old school servers shortly after.

Do you think a game as massive as World of Warcraft could emulate your success? What obstacles do you think Blizzard will have that are different from yours?

On a final note, I would like to say thank you to the OldSchool Team for creating one of the best games out at the moment. There is truly no other development team who is as close to the community as you guys are. Other developers could definitely learn some good things from studying OldSchool.

ModMatK

Answer: If I were Blizzard I would look at what is likely to happen if they released Vanilla servers based on the data available and then make a decision based on that. You have to remember WoW is not OSRS so what may happen could be entirely different to what happened for us.

One thing to be aware of is that making a wrong decision of this magnitude is likely to cost tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars so they have to be very careful.

As for the obstacles they would face, they will have to adapt (or entirely recreate) their development process, how they launch their content, how they deliver the game to players, etc... it is going to be a big ass job for them.

workaccount53

Question 38: Who plays Runescape the most while on the job?

What are your favorite skills/quests?

When you're playing Runescape just for fun and not for work what types of things do you enjoy doing?

In hind sight are there any updates or changes you've implemented into OSRS that you wish you would have done differently? Or was there any content that you were hoping you would be able to add into the game but for one reason or another didn't make it?

ModJohnC

Answer:

1) Out of the OS team, probably me.

2) Skills: Runecraft on OSRS. Quests: Mahjarrat storyline

3) PvM

4) I wish I'd implemented a threshold system for boss pets.

ModMatK

Answer:

John

Thieving

Killing players

I'd have made the changes to NMZ much more quickly.

PM_ME_ECON_ARTICLES

Question 39: Are there any interesting statistics or trends in OSRS that y'all have seen at your end that maybe the players aren't aware of?

ModMatK

Answer: Absolutely loads, I think I might save them for a special Dater stream.

DdvdD

Question 40: First off, thank you and the oldschool team for bringing actual oldschool servers to life. It's still hard to believe the community's concerns were taken so seriously.

Anyways, on to my question:

Considering the new items added to OSRS, the team and community obviously don't mind new content being added, as opposed to keeping it "2007"scape. In the future, will the staff draw the line to keep oldschool runescape, oldschool? Or will the staff cater to popular demand as oldschool progresses?

ModMatK

Answer: The players will draw the line, not us.

mallocer

Question 41: Hi team! I have three questions, the first two for anyone, and the last mainly for MMK.

• All: Roughly three years into OSRS, how do you feel the poll system is working? Are you getting a better feel for which balancing/tweaks should be polled? Are you optimistic that a good new skill could eventually pass a poll? It's pretty unique to have such a player-driven game. :)

• All: After three years, the playerbase has leveled up substantially, especially with NMZ. As of this post, there are 36k players with 99 hitpoints (indicating very high/maxed combats) and 179k players with 80 hitpoints (indicating a "high" combat level around 100+). Combined with better gear and a bunch of solo bosses released in the last couple years, high stats now mean teams are unnecessary for most content. If we look at all the pet-granting bosses, for example, only a few like corp and BA are typically done in teams by very high levels. Do you plan to introduce more group content with endgame replay value? Will raids help fill this niche?

• MMK: Another cool thing about OSRS is a bigger focus on data-driven decisions. How is the data warehouse coming along? In the past, you've referred to a drop log in the data warehouse that will count "how many of each item is dropped from each monster" to help with drop table balancing. For monsters that have recorded kill counts (in either the boss or slayer logs), can't you simply aggregate total kills and compare those counts to the drop rates to see a monster's impact (recording total kills once a day to see rate)? What of trends would a data warehouse drop log allow you to see that you can't see now?

•

Mod_Ronan

Answer:

1) I think that it is, as a whole, working well. Combined with the priority polls, we are able to create content which appeals to a majority of the player base quite frequently. There are, of course, downsides - but I think that as a whole the benefits we've seen so far outweigh them.

A new skill will pass a poll when it is the right skill for the community. Will that day come? I imagine it will.

2) We're going to be releasing raids later on this year which should satisfy groups of players looking for a fresh PvM challenge.

NO_I_AM_PALASH

Any chances at servers in Australia or Asia?

ModMatK

Answer: It all boils down to cost. The cost to create a data centre in that region of the world which offers what the other data centres do is ten times the cost of anywhere else. Even if we were to do this the infrastructure in Australia is such that many would be better off using the US servers anyway.

I'd love to give you a good solution, and we are still looking, but it's not as easy as opening up a few servers.

e3o2

Question 42: Do you like to play RS3?

ModJohnC

Answer: I do.

AMak10

Question 43: Why do the mods support a streamer in the community who faked cancer? Do you not see this as a lack of professionalism and possibly harmful to the growth of the business?

ModMatK

Answer: Streamers in general are a great asset to Old School, the popularity on Twitch is there for all to see. We like to treat the streamers all equally no matter what opinions others have about them.

ImRubic

Question 44: Since the addition of EOC led to the creation of OSRS, could you go in detail about player activity from pre-EOC, after EOC's release, till oldschool?

• Was there a drastic decrease/increase of players at any of these points?

JagexAsh

Answer: It was a bit of a downer until their Legacy mode came along. That really helped. Although, of course, Old School RuneScape was well positioned to snap up a lot of players who liked the older style of combat.

postfuturology

Question 45: Any plans on bringing a mobile version? What happened to html5??!

JagexAsh

Answer: We'd love that. It's not a small job though, so don't hold your breath, but I think it'd be well worth it if Jagex can assign the required devs for long enough.

HTML5 didn't work out - I think its performance on any "normal" computer was a bit too slow. So RS3 had a new client written instead, and the beta's been going very well.

The_Karmadyl

Question 46:

• Without needing specifics and figures, does Oldschool Runescape bring in enough revenue in order to justify not its existence for say the next few years, but to actually expand the staff team and advertise in order to grow?

• Did you see the DMM Invitational as a way of doing this, and would you say your investment in the $10k prizepool was worth it?

• If someone told me I'd be playing Runescape for half my life as I'm 20 now, I'd have laughed at them. Couldn't be happier with the current management and direction of the game myself, but my last question would be for any member of staff to answer what would be the one big update they'd like to make to the game, such as the introduction of a new skill for instance?

Thanks for your time!

JagexAsh

Answer:

1. Yup, membership numbers are doing just fine. Of course, we don't just have to cover our own costs - Jagex supports OSRS with access to the sysadmins, facilities, HR staff and all the other things that need to run in the background for us to do what you see. Plus there's investment in future products in the RuneScape franchise too. Anyway, we do indeed have an advert budget - I hear it pays for itself quite effectively - and we're in the middle of recruiting more staff.

2. Just about anything we do is intended to keep existing players playing and/or attract new players. Preferably both at the same time - those two goals shouldn't be allowed to conflict. The tournament stream got over 50k simultaneous viewers and a lot of attention outside the existing OSRS community, and seems to have led to a few thousand extra members, so I think it did jolly nicely.

3. Well, I'd have had some fun programming Sailing. But I have a lot of fun programming most things, so I'm not too fussy so long as players want what I'm doing.

MiniwarRS

Question 47: Just a curious question, what do you guys do in your spare time? besides from playing Runescape or fixing bugs etc.

ModMatK

Answer: I play LOTRO and the guitar and do all the boring stuff like housework and bringing up kids and stuff.

Adwaam

Question 48: What has been each of your favourite pieces of content to work on in OSRS so far?

JagexAsh

Answer: Bank tabs. I'd seen bank tabs in RuneScape for many years, and there were things about them that I didn't like, so I really enjoyed getting to create tabs for OSRS in my own way, using all those years of hindsight to try and give us something better.

JagexJed

Answer: I really enjoyed designing and creating the Christmas 2015 event, but I'm sure Monkey Madness II will take the #1 spot once it's released and the stress of development is a thing of the past.

ModMatK

Answer: I really enjoyed writing all the lore for Zeah.

ModJohnC

Answer: ~~Sailing~~ Zulrah, but I think MM2 will surpass that for me.

Bloodveld_Task

Question 49: Mod Mat K, This game is highly tailored towards people who have played the game in the past and are resubscribing. Any data showing actually how many new players who have never played the game before are joining? Have you got any ideas or plans to recruit new players into the game?

ModMatK

Answer: At the moment we are very focused on nostalgia, but we still bring in thousands of new accounts every day. Now, a lot of those will be people who have played before, but a significant portion won't be. I think we could estimate at the very least there are a few hundred new-to-Runescape players joining every day which is very healthy.

Afterall, the game is very simple to understand.

Lieden

Question 50: Are you guys happy with the current state of the game? If there was one thing you could change instantly, what would it be, and why?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: As a player I am very happy with the current state of the game. The very start of Old School was one of the best gaming experiences of my life and since then there have been so many changes which make the game much more playable for day-to-day gaming.

If I could change one thing it would be Vet'ion. I'd love to see him get a revamp to be a more interesting boss.

bigbang5766

Which mod do you have a secret crush on?

JagexJed

Answer: Ice Poseidon when he eventually becomes one.

carbon7

Question 51: Which game has more active players per month overall, RS3 or OSRS?

Do you feel that OSRS has a team of adequate size given its popularity?

ModMatK

Answer: I can't give you numbers like that, but I can say OSRS has the perfect team size once we recruit the outstanding roles.

metul_zwek

Question 52: Thank you for doing a IamA!

How long does each one of you play RuneScape? Since when did you start?

It would be very interesting to know from each one of you!

JagexJed

Answer: I played RuneScape from 2005-2009, and then got into it again with the release of OSRS.

JagexAsh

Answer: I don't remember exactly when I started. Jagex's records don't go before Februrary 2002, so it was sometime before that.

ModJohnC

Answer: I played RuneScape on and off from 2006 to 2013 and had a comp cape when OS came out. When it did I played OS religiously and found myself ranked 4th at the end of 2013 when this QA job role popped up so I applied for it and got it! Since then I've been playing more RS3. I think I'm at about 20,000 total hours played.

ModMatK

Answer: I started in 2004

walterism

Question 53: Will the ducks surrounding Lumbridge figure out what's happening already?

JagexMaz

Answer: No. They're all a bit quackers.

BeatzEntertainment

Question 54: Iv been banned for 7 years already, can I speak to someone about a new appeal after 7 years please?

ModMatK

Answer: Was it your cat?

WhoopsRS

Question 55: Whats the best thing you love about working at Jagex?

JagexAsh

Answer: The chance to do cool stuff that makes players happy. (Well, that's the goal, anyway.)

ModMatK

Answer: Seeing so many players enjoying what we do everyday.

ModJohnC

Answer: The passion of my team.

Raziele_

Question 56: If runescape was real, what city/place would you live and why?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: I know what happens to men in RuneScape so I feel like Entrana gives me the best chance of survival.

JagexMaz

Answer: I'd live with the gnomes and squirrels in the trees and take glider lessons daily.

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Falador, the fact all of the knight's names are puns is fantastic - and the place is just so grand. :)

ModJohnC

Answer: I'd build a nice cabin on the beach next to Thurgo, I like my peace and quiet and that peninsula looks good!

Question 57: Aachaa

Do you plan on introducing more skilling pets? Perhaps a rat in a chef hat for cooking or a raccoon for thieving.

ModJohnC

Answer: I can't wait to offer another batch of skilling pets!

Prif

Question 58: How was the original OSRS team put together?

JagexAsh

Answer: Mod Philip dug through the files to try and find a complete archive of RuneScape from any time in its history. Once he'd found this one from August 2007, he did some rewriting to adapt it for Jagex's 2013 server setup. Meanwhile the managers wanted 2 content devs, a QA and a community to operate it. They chose me and Mod Nexus - and found I was already in the middle of writing them an email begging to be assigned to OSRS - and sent us to OSRS as a temporary thing. Which turned out not to be so temporary after all, since the players kept on playing it.

iAqua

Question 59: Mod Ghost: Would you ever consider streaming your work and designs as you develop content? I'm talking graphical updates as you probably wouldn't want to spoil new content. I'd love to see how you do it!

I'm also loving how you guys are answering questions on your separate accounts, it's nice to see different opinions!

JagexMaz

Answer: Mod Ghost isn't currently available, but he does stream his work occasionally and it is very popular. When we were leading up to Zeah we had regular streams of the graphics being created.

We also have a regular sneak peek of the week slot in our weekly streamed Q&A which sometimes features Mod Ghost showing off some of his recent work.

CaptainCurl

Question 60: What is the funniest thing you have seen or heard about that came in a report for offensive language? Even if you don't specifically read them I'm sure there are some story's that have been told around the office.

Mod_Ronan

Answer: I saw a report sent in which two friends re-enacting the Get Rich or Die Tryin' film.

Buuloki

Question 61: Any information on Australian servers/worlds? There is a lot of us in the OSRS community!

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Unfortunately, we are still very much in the same situation as when we last addressed it. Australian servers are expensive and can't easily be made a part of our existing infrastructure. We are always looking for ways to better service the region but we don't have any news just yet.

ImRubic

Question 62: What was the original reasoning behind creating Oldschool versus making Eoc more user-friend while it was in beta?

JagexAsh

Answer: Old School wasn't expected to exist until long after EoC finished its beta and had its full launch, so there was never a point where such a choice could have been made.

ModMatK

Answer: The original reason was because we heard the community shouting about wanting a legacy server and the thought that we would make the community happy if we did it.

rednotbloo

Question 63: What are your thoughts on adding a bank to the house at 99 construction?

ModJohnC

Answer: OP.

Johnoni

Question 64: Hey guys. I've always been a big fan of Old School Runescape.

I was wondering to how serious you take your 75% vote threshold. If somehow it was voted 75% to change the gameplay and graphics of the game like EoC and a complete graphics overhaul would you go through with it? Or do you guys have a big weighing in the final decision for implementation?

This would be extremely unlikely but you would never know what could happen in the coming years.

ModMatK

Answer: If something which passed a poll was to irrevocably damage the game we would veto it. However, it is unlikely to ever pass a poll.

Allisdair

Question 65: Runescape is a big passion of mine and working at Jagex would be a dream. I'm a university graduate with a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. Is there a place for somebody with my skillset at Jagex?

JagexAsh

Answer: Depends what else you'd got to go alongside it, I think. That'd be a valuable skill-set especially in RS3 where they write a lot of quests, though if you were ever to apply as a game designer you might want to talk up your game design insights too. (You almost certainly do have game design insights based on what you know to be good or bad in RuneScape.)

Mind you, a team can only fit a limited number of designers before it runs short of programmers to implement the designs, so such roles are necessarily less common.

ModMatK

Answer: Your best bet is to work your way up through Players Support or QA.

bman_7

Question 66: Have there been any updates/changes that you at first thought would be very simple, but turned out to be difficult to implement?

JagexAsh

Answer: Many. Particularly the first time I added a button to the bank screen - I think it was the deposit-all button. That's because RuneScape got a new interface format in 2006. Many of OSRS's interfaces are still in the old format, whereas our 2007-style interface editor tool only outputs the newer format. So when I needed to add a button to the bank, I also needed to recreate the entire bank behaviour, including the swap/insert behaviour for rearranging items, with proper clientside de-lagging.

I_evade_fate

Question 67: I have been really loving my experience with Old School Runescape. you guys are the most interactive Devs I have seen and I feel like that is often taken for granted by a community that just seems to yell "MOAR!"

You guys have done an amazing job pumping out loads of content, but my questions is: Is there a plan to maybe slow down content production in order to put it in properly? ex. Nieve's cave or NMZ. While awesome updates, there is little lore or reason to have them in the game other than ease of access.

Thanks in advanced!

ModJohnC

Answer: We're getting a little better at this these days I feel, now that the team is bigger we have the benefit of time to add that little bit more value to content, such as the story surrounding Zulandra and the history of Great Kourend.

Fiism

Question 68: What is the most abnormal or unique account build you have seen ingame? (by this i mean like defence pures, sotd pures, 10hp skillers or just any abnormal arrangement of stats)

ModJohnC

10 HP with 99 all other combat stats. Dude spent a LONG time at the warriors guild.

JagexAsh

Answer: It's not exactly a build, but I saw a thread on TipIt years ago where players were calculating the standard deviations of their stats, and rating each other based on a high arithmetic mean and low standard deviation (i.e. all stats nearly the same, preferably very high).

foamy10

Question 69: Any chance of Old School going free? I want to get into it and play with my friends since I missed out back in middle school but I don't want to subscribe to it if I'm not going to like it.

Mod_Ronan

Answer: You can play a portion of the game for free. It works in the same way RuneScape used to, some skills and areas are free and to access to rest of the skills/world you subscribe :)

JagexMaz

Answer: Oldschool went f2p quite a while back :-) Give it a try!

Mod_Kieren

Answer: You can play the F2P game which offers you a massive slice of the game! Over half the skills, quite a large list of quests and tons of content and a huge map to explore :)

The F2P game really is a game that stands by itself, without thrusting the members features in your face.

JagexJed

Answer: You can use the free-to-play worlds on OSRS without subscribing for membership.

You can also purchase membership using in-game currency through the form of "membership bonds".

ModJohnC

Answer: You can play the F2P version of the game, as it was back in 2007!

Kyetsi

Question 70: did you guys choose to go to the osrs team to work on it or did you get assigned to the job?

what did you guys do before you worked on osrs or before you joined jagex?

is it a challange to keep trying to figure out intresting bosses and pvm stuff in general with the limited combat mechanics that osrs has?

JagexAsh

Answer: Mat K, Reach and I were all working on different things around Jagex. At that particular time, I was experimenting with camera commands to see if we could make a better viewing system for the forthcoming RS3 update (remember, this is before RS was formally relaunched as RS3). When the manager came over to ask me if I'd be willing to work on OSRS, he found I was in the middle of typing him an email begging to be assigned to OSRS. So that worked out nicely.

amegos14

Question 71: Ironically I've been playing since 2007, and I was really excited for when you guys brought all this back and more. Do you guys plan on expanding your team more? I know you guys have a pretty good team right now but any future plans for having more people on the old school team? Thank you guys :D

JagexAsh

Answer: Simply, yes. We've most recently been recruiting another artist to work alongside Mod Ghost, plus another QA tester. Beyond that I'd like yet another QA tester, a second community/marketing Jmod and maybe a tea-boy for myself and Maz.

ModMatK

Answer: We look to expand the team when we need to, currently there are 3 positions we hope to fill soon.

Tomm699

Question 72: If you guys don't mind me asking, which subjects did you do at college/A-level/university, and if you were to recommend anything to students studying computer science what would you suggest? <3 thanks guys

JagexMaz

Answer: I did Maths, Further Maths and Physics at A level. (Before computing A level existed!)

I don't yet have a degree (working on one part time), altho I do recommend anyone thinking of university look into either programming or mathematics. In general, the more programming languages you understand at a fundamental level, the better your chance of getting a job in programming.

If you also want to be a content developer, then working on your creative and games design skills is a must! For this, I'd highly recommend making your own games and getting good feedback on them.

Avanic

Question 73: I haven't played in a while but I remember old school runescape only being in a pretty small resolution, if so, will it ever be 1080p?

Jagex_Weath

Answer: We now have realizable mode so you can play in any size window :)

PGTundra

Question 74: Who would win a PvP Battle Royale out of the staff?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: It has sparked a massive argument, the pizza is not being flung yet, the beer is being drunk, and we have agreed every week on our Q&A livestream, we will be doing a segment of Jmod v Jmod pvp fights.

JagexMaz

Answer: Not me. I suck at combat. However, make it a last one knitting competition, and I'm right with you...

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Definitely me.

LieutenantGravy

Question 75: How do you feel about Zezima?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: He is a living legend. I still have him added.

Labatomite

Question 76: Is there any way I can convert my old account back to 2007scape? I was on the verge of getting the quest cape but stopped playing because of college. Now I'd really like to get back into it but I don't want to play on the new servers or start a new character.

JagexMaz

Answer: Your account will work, but your save game is RS3. You'll have to start from scratch on OSRS.

sohmeho

Question 77: Can we look forward to armor trimming being added as a crafting skill in an upcoming patch?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Yes. ^No

oi_lmao

Question 78: do you ever plan to finish maxing on osrs? not a troll question

ModJohnC

Answer: I will likely get around to it eventually, but it's not in my current gaming plans.

Hyperscore

Question 79: What some of your favorite games to play besides Runescape?

ModJohnC

Answer: Pokemon, Smash Bros - got a few thousand hours of Football Manager racked up over the years but I don't play it any more. Spend most of my time on RS still these days.

Mod_Ronan

Answer: I'm addicted to Rust and CS:GO.

Mod_Ronan

Answer: MG1

JagexMaz

Answer: Currently Startopia and Banished... but I skip around games an awful lot!

Churdles

Question 80: Where do you think RuneScape would be without the release of the Old School servers?

ModJohnC

Answer: I think the RuneScape game would be where it is now.

Heggins

Question 81: How do you plan to stop jagex from stopping your servers, just like blizzard did with WoW private servers?

I love original runescape, and am very interested in joining your site. I am just worried about how long this can last before jagex comes after their IP

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Old School RuneScape is an official Jagex product - we are in the clear!

Heggins

Question 82: Really?? As in your team is actually associated with Jagex?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: We are all Jagex employees. Some of our team members have worked here for over 10 years. In fact, Ian Gower is on the Old School team!

WhatsGud

Question 83: Not sure if this had been addressed or not, but the only reason I haven't come back to OSRS is that I didn't want to start over. Even if I started with no items, just having the skills I had spent countless hours to train would be enough for me to go back to playing. Is this possible, and if not, why not?

JagexMaz

Answer: When we "rebooted" the 2007 game, it was simply the game with no save data. The character profiles on RS3 had already diverged so much with the older game that they were in no way compatible. So, unfortunately not.

Murderkais3r

Question 84: on a scale to 1/10 how do you guys like your job? If the possibility of Jagex selling of to the Chinese mining company come, will that have an effect on the scale?

Jagex_Weath

Answer: I'd give it a solid 9. Of all the places I've worked, it's definitely at the top.

I don't think that would have any impact on my rating.

ModMatK

Answer: A 10 (if 10 is the best) and whoever owns us doesn't matter, it is making a game for you guys to enjoy that matters.

JagexAsh

Answer: I get to do something that matters to the customers and makes a difference to them. That's a big deal for me, so I like my job very much. Also Jagex is nice to me. No-one can predict what the future holds, but frankly I don't see a lot of change - OSRS is running successfully, and whoever owns Jagex will have a strong incentive to keep it that way.

profuttbuck

Question 85: Will you guys have any input on the new Runescape idle game? Any idea when it's being released?

ModJohnC

Answer: We have had a few discussions regarding that but I'm not sure when it is being released, though I think it is this year.

jgroenenboom

Question 86: Hey guys! Huge fan of the game, went hard all threw highschool. Got my guy up to lvl 132 back in 2012, I was very dissapointed when I tried to make a comeback but the new and updated game seemed to have no memory of my character...He is no longer on the highscores and I can't seem to find any evidence that I ever played the game. Does this classic runescape have any traditional servers that would recognize me and I could come back and play from where we left off??

ModMatK

Answer: When OSRS started we never expected anyone to make it their gaming home, but they did. We then had to make the decision not to allow players to transfer their stats as those that had put the hard work into getting to the top of the hiscores would get quite rightly upset. As a commercial thing it would make lots of sense to allow it, but it is not great for the integrity of the game.

bobanators

Question 87: Do you guys know/remember a guy called Tim Hodges? He worked at Jagex around about a year ago? Was working on the failed Transformers game before he left I believe.. Friend of a friend..

JagexAsh

Answer: Sorry, I didn't know many of that team.

Wackabie

Question 88: Could we get a more definitive outlook on the AHK rule? The 1:1 ratio sounds real to me, as well as use at your own risk.. but is 1:1 REALLY safe?

JagexMaz

Answer: The 1:1 action ratio rule is incorrect. If you automate anything, you may get banned. This was covered in one of our Q&A's recently.

ehazkul

Question 89: Ok so i was at the salvation army and just wanted a hoodie. I bought this black hoodie (the thing was brand new crisp) with a big demon face on the back. And a symbol or something on the front.

I had no idea what it was from aside from a little small tag on the inside that said runescape on it.

Can any of you tell me what this is from? Or what it has to do with the game. Google search didnt help me.

JagexMaz

Answer: If I recall correctly, this was one of our goblin hoodies we released with one of the more recent goblin quests.... but don't quote me on that! :-D

oi_lmao

Question 90: do you ever plan to finish maxing on osrs? not a troll question

ModJohnC

Answer: I will likely get around to it eventually, but it's not in my current gaming plans.

crisothetank

Question 91: can anyone tell me the reward for monkey madness II?

Mod_Archie

Answer: New range ballista weapons, the monkey backpack and Zenyte jewellery is about all I can tell you.

kaygee420

Question 92: What is a feature you like in RS3 that you wouldn't mind implementing in OSRS?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: The lobby!

JagexMaz

Answer: Clans

Mod_Archie

Answer: I would love to see PvP armour and maybe even chaotics.

KingOfMostWorms

Question 93: I know it's not entirely relevant, but do you guys have any parables from the development of Stellar Dawn? Have any of the lessons learnt from it had an effect on OSRC?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Ian Gower actively developed for Stellar Dawn, he's not around right now, but try sending him a tweet sometime, he may want to share some stuff! His Twitter

Xylight

Question 94: How is the development of the battle royale concept going?

ModJohnC

Answer: Hasn't started development yet.

ModMatK

Answer: The concept should be ready in a week or so, then we start development ready for mid summer.

Killoah

Question 95: Is there ever going to be an opportunity to see Sailing or Artisan ever again?

ModJohnC

Answer: Of course, if the demand is there for a new skill we will offer you one.

Blaypeg

Question 96: Is there any way the Next client could ever be used for OldschoolRS?

JagexAsh

Answer: Not that particular client, but the same technology used to create it could be used to create one for us. However it took them years to get that client made, even starting from the HTML5 foundations they made in 2013, and we don't even have those foundations.

lucien15937

Question 97: Do you think OSRS would have ever become a thing if EOC had never happened?

ModJohnC

Answer: I think so, though it perhaps wouldn't as popular or have arrived as soon as it did.

MUFCBoothy

Question 98: Were you disappointed in the initial reaction to Zeah, which were for the most poor very negative? Who made the decision to scrap the original favour system in order to allow favour to be gained in each house?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: No, I think it was pretty good to be honest. The big updates are always the most controversial, it affects a lot more people, there is hype about it, if 5% of players have a negative opinion about it, that's a lot more players for the Zeah update than it is for a small bug fix for example.

The criticisms were very fair, and we took it on board, just the day after release we made a lot of balancing tweaks to make gaining house favour more quickly and it made a big difference to the player opinions of it. After a while we were discussing further on what to do, and as a team agreed that just removing the favour system altogether would be a good thing - the community weren't fans of it, we tried to do something slightly different, and not everything new can always work. We did this alongside some big Zeah graphical improvements and it went down exceptionally well!

Goes to say with any update really, we really do try to listen to the community and implement feedback ASAP. We did a second update this week just to make some tweaks to the Bank placeholders we released yesterday just to slightly alter the way they work and ensure they were the exact way the community wanted.

JagexAsh

Answer: Looking back with hindsight, I think we made it too slow to gain favour in the different houses. If switching alignment were like getting Miscellania favour, which you can do pretty quickly, it wouldn't have been so frustrating for players to move from house to house, so we may not have been so pressured into letting players keep 100% favour in all five houses. I was actually on holiday when the decision was made, but I'm pretty sure it was a joint team decision that I'd have supported.

ModJohnC

Answer: To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect - Zeah was the first update of it's kind to OS. I wouldn't say the response was negative, the fact so many players suggested improvements showed us they liked it and wanted to build on what we had. The community decided for us that the favour system should be less punishing but the original system wasn't scrapped as you do have to unlock the ability to retain your favour.

Petemarsh54

Question 99: In your opinion would it be better for a new player to get into the old school runescape or the current version?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: We're bias... :P. We're on this team cause we're massive fans of the Old School version of the game, but many of us do play both.

It really depends on your play style.

JagexAsh

Answer: Rather depends on what the player wants from their game. The two versions of RuneScape tend to focus in different places, with a lot more quest stories to explore in RS3 while OSRS attracts a lot more PvP combat action.

quincy

Question 100: What kind of advertising do you do, and towards what kind of people do you direct them?

ModJohnC

Answer: Answering as a non-marketing person...

Some and towards the right people.

ModMatK

Answer: We do a lot of advertising through Facebook and Reddit targeting players who may be interested in the content we are producing. For example, we targeted E-Sports enthusiasts (among others) for DMM Seasonals. We also do banner advertising via various agencies.

JagexAsh

Answer: There's a lot of advert banners for RS out there. We try very hard to direct them at people whose computers DON'T seem to have played RS, since that'd be a waste.

Technically things like the DMM tournament are adverts too, since they get a lot of attention online from people who wouldn't otherwise have heard of OSRS. And, in a smaller way, any meme picture we share is a form of advert for the same reason.

Statue_left

Question 101: What ever happened to the idea of letting users compose some new tracks for the game (MM2?)? I'd be super into giving that a shot

ModMatK

Answer: It's something we'd still love to do, but there are a few technical issues with sound banks etc which would make the process very labourious.

JagexAsh

Answer: Specifically, the MIDI soundbank we have here would not match whatever your computer has, so any MIDI you sent us would sound wrong if we put it into RS. If we can ever export our soundbank in a format people could use with their own composing software, that would help a lot.

TinyTankz

Question 102: are you guys thinking of adding a Australian server for osrs? if not can we please get one? Please answer this is important

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Two key problems:

• Servers cost a ton to rent in Australia, substantially more than elsewhere.

• The servers in Australia are also not very good, meaning players wouldn't really see that big of an improvement.

Ultimately it is just a high cost for not much out of it, but of course it is always something on our radar, and if we can pull it off, we will. We know there is demand for it!

elitharion3

Question 103: Will you ever repoll sailing?

ModJohnC

Answer: We may revisit the topic of Sailing, if we feel there is sufficient demand for the content.

YepImRobbie

Question 104: When will bird eggs be useful? Can we at least cook them into fried/scrambled bird eggs.

JagexAsh

Answer: There's no date set for that. We'd be perfectly happy to do it, but players ask for a lot of other things too, and making the eggs useful hasn't felt like a priority.

Killoah

Question 105: How successful was the first Deadman Invitational in terms of new players/Membership numbers?

ModMatK

Answer: Hugely, I'm not going to give you numbers, but it was on the scale of the biggest updates of 2015.

ItsHaus

Question 106: What is the worst thing that ever happened to you guys while working at the Old School RuneScape team?

JagexJed

Answer: While working on Zeah I accidentally released some fishing spots that were attackable, it was quite embarrassing. Other than that, someone ate my croissants at GameBlast.

B4107

Question 107: Multiple questions, bare with me.

How does it feel to be leading the more popular version of the game? :^ )

What was your personal favourite time in your Runescape days?

Was there ever an idea you really wished would get pushed into the game but disappointed you greatly when it didn't happen?

Would you have signed the petition to keep Donald Trump out of the UK?

Favourite food?

JagexMaz

Answer: It feels amazing to be working on RuneScape! My favourite time would have been working on the Stronghold of Security. To be able to make that much of an impact on player's awareness of security issues was amazing. I wish Fossil island (kudos island) had made it.... My favourite food is chocolate!

JagexAsh

Answer:

• It's not a competition. OSRS is thriving, and we are very happy about that. We hope RS3 continues to thrive too - it's where many of our friends work.

• 2006.

• I wanted to take the clan battlefield from RS3's citadels, take it out of the citadels and let people save the maps on their hard drives in some shareable format. Then we could have some seriously emergent gameplay options in a place where all players could experiment with them and play their own way.

• I didn't sign it.

• Steak, rare, with blue cheese sauce, and lots of fries.

ModJohnC

Answer: Working on RuneScape... it's as awesome as it sounds. Seeing our work appreciated by so many thousands of players just feels awesome.

My favourite experiences on RuneScape were grinding out 99 RC on oldschool.

Sailing.

I did sign it.

Pigs in blankets, in yorkshires, in gravy with mint sauce.

chuckiebarlet

Question 108: Why did you guys go back to 2007 and not 2006? Did you guys not have the resources to go back that far? Or was it based on what the players wanted? I'd seen countless 2006 runescape private servers over the years before the old school servers came out, I just wanna know why specifically 2007 and not earlier or later

Mod_Ronan

Answer: We were lucky to be able to go back to 2007 - it all came down to Mod Philip of the engine team finding an old backup of the game in a dusty cupboard somewhere. Going back to 2006 really wasn't an option.

August 2007 worked perfectly as it was before the trade limit, before the removal of the wilderness and slap-bang in the middle of what many players were asking for.

Hardstyler1

Question 109: Do you play Runescape yourselves?

JagexAsh

Answer: These days any spare time I have for OSRS is spent programming OSRS. It's not that big a team, and there's always much that players want us to do.

bubbleguy03

Question 110: Are we likely to get anything similar to mutagens on future bosses? I think the idea of a super rare unreadable cosmetic drop is a really awesome idea and adds a little extra incentive even if the drop rate is 1/12k ect

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Certainly! I really like them too.

Stone2443

Question 111: Do you plan to repoll Sailing?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: We will do at some point, when we feel the community are ready for it. They stated they wanted other content done first previously.

md1990rs

Question 112: I've been a fan of OSRS since it came out. Do you see any of the "newer" quests coming to old school with the old school style graphics and sounds?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: We are very unlikely to produce the same quests Runescape 3 has. It would be much more exciting to tell our own stories! Which is why we're going to be releasing Monkey Madness II on the 5th of May, and likely going further into the lore of Zeah later in the year, Zeah being a brand new continent we added to the game in January!

RS_Lebareslep

Question 113: To any mod with knowledge about the bank code in both RS3 and OSRS: why was it possible for OldSchool to make bank placeholders, while RS3 probably won't get them? Did RS3 mess up the code, or did you guys improve the OSRS bank code so much?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: When Ash developed the bank code for the OSRS version of the bank, it was done with hindsight. RS3s was done 1 feature at a time, with each one having to be added on every year or so, whenever they updated the bank.

Ash knew what we were going to need in future, and coded it in a far more efficient and expandable way for features we were likely to want :)

RS3 are investigating what it would take to do a bank overhaul and potentially add features like this.

Hitler_had_OK_art

Question 114: So how do I get a job with you guys? I'm graduating next year and for over a decade I've been fantasising about seeing a piece of content that I can point at and say "That's mine" in the game that's taken over 7,000 hours of my life and want to know what I should focus on for my final year. I'm currently stalking most of your job offerings and basically taking all of the skills you ask for in it and learning them, working in agile based teams, etc. Is this a good approach or is there an 'X factor' that I should be aiming for?

Oh and also should I mention that I scripted bots (pls no bully)?

JagexMaz

Answer: All our vacancies can be seen on our corporate site here: http://www.jagex.com/careers/jobs/

Hitler_had_OK_art

Question 115: Hey Maz,

I'm aware and I stalk it pretty much every other day and add the experiences the various jobs ask for to my own personal to do list (currently learning SCRUM atm) but my question is more geared towards what else should I learn to make myself desirable to you guys?

JagexMaz

Answer: Depends what role you're looking for exactly. For a content developer we would be looking for things such as: The ability to code, Game design, Creativity, Balancing, & Living, breathing and knowing OSRS inside out

perrywinkleJr

Question 116: how do you guys deal with all the lost time of investing man hours into assets and development only for a game mechanic to be voted against being implemented?

ModMatK

Answer: We don't invest any significant time until we know the results of the poll. Unless of course we think it will pass easily.

Taravangian

Question 117: When I think old Runescape, I think of like 2001-2003. Is there any chance you guys would ever look into bring thatback? I remember being extremely disappointed at the news that (a) you would have to choose between "RuneScape 2" and "Runescape Classic", and (b) that eventually RS Classic would drop all f2p support. I stopped playing around 2004-2005 for the most part so I don't know whether there have been changes on that scene, or if "true" Classic is even still available. But I have fonder memories of that version of the game than any other.

JagexMaz

Answer: Classic is still available, but only to those who logged in during specified "open" periods. This does happen occasionally, so keep your eyes open and play OldSchool whilst waiting for it!

iLikeCryo

Question 118: What is your favourite food & drink?

Mod_Archie

Answer: Grilled chicken and Coke 0.

LieV2

Question 119: Mod Reach previously had a "hacky" view on getting content to work rather than making it require engine work all the time. Could this be something we look at again? Or it is just bad practice and something you'd rather move away from? IT seemed like a pragmatic way of getting things the community wanted in game - with a less literal approach on suggestions.

ModMatK

Answer: It's very bad practice and we are still dealing with the rammifications to this day.

Displace0

Question 120: How did the mods who were working on Runescape 3 react when they were told about Oldschool and that they would be working on it?

JagexMaz

Answer: That would be me then.... and quite flattered really. Also slightly apprehensive, as Duel Arena was not a particularly easy task to start off with!

General_RA

Question 121: In a world without engine work or polls, if you could have any content in game from your imagination what would it be?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: To essentially implement a sandbox for players to make their own content, quests, dungeons, little games and have them be able to share these easily.

I think this would just be incredible, would be an awesome experience for creative players, and players looking for more content too! :)

JagexMaz

Answer: Everyone would be a Squirrel in a suit. So... a human in a penguin suit would also be a squirrel... in a human suit... in a penguin suit...

Squirrels.

Binge_Gaming

Question 122: I for one put copious hours into the game and once the combat update came out, I became genuinely disinterested and stopped playing. I heard that the old runescape came back, so I tried to log on, and found no such luck for my account.

My understanding is that the old school runescape requires creating a new account, and that older accounts that got the updated runescape are stuck on the new servers. Why was this done? Wouldn't it have made more sense to allow players to transfer their accounts that had a tremendous amount of hours played to the server of their choice?

JagexMaz

Answer: When 07 was resurrected, the save game data was not. At that point the RS3 save games had evolved so much that they were no longer backwards compatible.

buncieboy

Question 123: Do you guys do any sort of work experience / placement (unpaid) for students? I am looking to do some work experience over the summer before starting computer science at university and I would love to be able to work with you guys! (Ps keep up the good work, love the game!)

JagexMaz

Answer: We do have an intern program with several universities, and we have had work experience placements before. I'd recommend putting in a prospective application from our corporate site http://www.jagex.com/careers/jobs/

vieraldi

Question 124: I liked Runescape up until the very update of evolution of combat. I mean everything about Runescape up until the update. Is that what OSRS is?

Jagex_Weath

Answer: It's RuneScape as it was in 2007, with some of the more popular later updates (such as the GE) and a load of unique updates that have been voted in by the players

Mod_Archie

Answer: EoC was introduced in 2012. OSRS is based off of the year 2007, which or own, custom updates added ontop. As someone who can relate to your comment, I definitely recommend checking it out.

mizochi

Question 125: Will we be seeing any new skills in the upcoming years?

Mod_Archie

Answer: Sailing is being reconsidered later this year and there will be a priority poll by the end of the month letting players decide which update they'd like to see the most from us.

Sejve

Question 126: How are formulas for drop rates/damage/etc created? Specifically the one in the deadman mode blog post, what factors are considered and how do you even think of these? Or is there a tool for them?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: For drop tables, generally they are done in the following fashion:

$drop = random(512)

if $drop < 1 {drop an abyssal whip}

else if $drop < 10 {drop coins}

else if $drop < 40 {drop rune med helm}

etc to fill out the full table, the command random(x) returns a random number between 0 and x-1

IAMAgeorgeGervin

Question 127: Hi, As someone who has never touched Runescape, is it worth it to start playing now? How far behind will I be compared to the majority of the playing population?

Mod_Archie

Answer: We have new players join every day and we also have players reach insane accomplishments every day. It's definitely not too late and you shouldn't feel pressured to invest time to compete with others as you'll find it's pointless. :)

zeWoah

Question 128: There's a meme going around /r/2007scape where practically every update suggested would require an "engine rework." What exactly does this entail and why is it so hard to add or update things without an engine rework?

Mod_Archie

Answer: This should answer your question :)

https://youtu.be/nwLT8f4TiRY?t=7m32s

TheBrokenRuler

Question 129: Hey OSRS Team! Do you want me to trim ur rune armour for free? Or double your GP?

...BUYIN GF.

Mod_Archie

Answer: memes

iStuart

Question 130: I'm an American who is finishing up an undergraduate degree in mathematics with a minor in computer science. I've been playing rs/osrs for over ten years now. What are my chances of getting a job in the osrs team once I have my degree?

JagexMaz

Answer: You would have to gain eligibility to work in the UK as we do not sponsor UK work visas. Other than that, you'd stand the same chance as anyone else applying. Make sure you've developed some of your own games and experienced the whole process and you'll then have something to show off too!

Rainbow_Royale

Question 131: First off I want to thank you for allowing me to experience the nostalgia of OSRS. Very few game developers give their players such an oppurtunity.

That being said, do you think we will ever be able to play OSRS while keeping our stats from the main RS? I would very much enjoy playing OSRS daily, but unfortunately I am not inclined to restart 10 years of progress.

JagexMaz

Answer: Unfortunately the backup we restored of 2007 was game only, not saved player data. At the time we did this, the save games of RS3 had evolved so much that they were no longer backwards compatible at all.

ShinedownBoomLay

Question 132: I stopped playing Runescape back in 2007. Could you convince me to come back after a 8 year absence? I mean I loved it back then but then the grand exchange was introduced and other things happened.. causing me to abandon the game.

Mod_Kieren

Answer: The first major difference I believe is that we're completely community driven, ideas for updates come directly from the community, and everything we do goes to a poll!

Ideas that at least 75% of players vote for get into the game, you really have the power to affect what you want to see.

On top of that, the whole team use twitter actively, we stream every single week, and really do engage with the community - it adds a lot in my opinion.

DG729

Question 133: What do you think is the worst thing that's happened to OSRS, or what is your least favorite thing the community has voted on? (GE comes to mind for me.)

Mod_Archie

Answer: I would've liked to see Jad 2 pass, as well as Sailing.

EvanAndrewH

Question 134: Are there any Job openings for the Old School Team that can be done by people in USA without travelling/moving?

JagexMaz

Answer: Unfortunately we do not sponsor UK work permits and generally do not do remote working, so unless you're willing to relocate and are eligible for working in the UK, no. Sorry.

boompjebonsai

Question 135: Any chance of reintroducing Skill Total Worlds for free to play?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: We've polled it and it failed. We may take another look in the future, though.

Throwawayof2016

Question 136: Am I right in thinking I can't use my old accounts on that server? Also, is there still a F2P version?

Jagex_Weath

Answer: You can use your old account but everyone starts from scratch so there's a level playing field. There is still a F2P version :)

Mod_Ronan

Answer: You can use your account but your stats and items won't transfer over. Yes, there is a free-to-play version! You can play here.

mlkk22

Question 137: I play RS3 and a little OS, do you have any tips for OS? Also, can you tell Mod Timbo on RS3 to stop killing trees?

Onetwenty7

Question 138: Any word on when mm2 will be released?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: May 5th!

dnbwow

Question 139: Hey everyone, Just want to thank you all for everything you do before i ask a question. This one is for the developers.. So using older java and such, is implementing stuff in this game difficult? I've been using java and other oop languages for years but i dont really know how complex the code is for runescape. Is it a difficult task to code things say like zulrah for example?

JagexMaz

Answer: We use a language called RuneScript to code our content. This language itself is written in Java by Ian, our engine developer. So, we as content developers never have to worry about Java. :-)

JapanRs

Question 140: Taylor Swift or Katy Perry?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Metallica.

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Obviously Taylor Swift. What sort of savage would say otherwise?

awesomesonofabitch

Question 141: Can I play for free?

Is it P2W?

Mod_Archie

Answer: We do have free to play servers and there is no MTX/P2W in Old School.

Jagex_Weath

Answer: Yep you can play completely for free, you can even purchase membership with gold earned in game.

Definitely not pay to win :)

Mod_Ronan

Answer: We don't have microtransactions and, yes, you can play for free!

FreakyFruit

Question 142:

1) What is that armored troop carrier doing outside of your office?

2) Have you guys ever made any effort, past or present, to contact (formerly) top players such as Zezima?

3) Do you guys host annual employee celebrations at Jagex called 'drop parties'?

Mod_Ronan

Answer:

1) What is that armored troop carrier doing outside of your office?

It is gone now :(

2) Have you guys ever made any effort, past or present, to contact (formerly) top players such as Zezima?

We recently made a documentary talking about the history of Jagex and RuneScape. The video team managed to get an interview with Zezima!

3) Do you guys host annual employee celebrations at Jagex called 'drop parties'?

We don't do them at Jagex but we do at RuneFest!

Old_Runescape

Question 143: How long was there rumblings of the project at Jagex? Do any of you know if these plans were in place in advance or just spontaneus due to demand?

JagexMaz

Answer: From my perspective it was all rather sudden. I wasn't involved with it at the beginning tho, so I don't really know how long it was discussed before it came to be.

JapanRs

Question 144: Favorite thing about working at Jagex?

Mod_Archie

Answer: Working with people who are genuinely passionate about the game.

JagexMaz

Answer: People. Both those I work with, and the impact I can have on all those players like yourself.

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Getting to help make a game I grew up playing. I've played RuneScape for over half my life so working at Jagex is a dream come true.

Mod_Kieren

Answer: The people I work with are truly fantastic, some incredible minds are on the OS team!

The main thing though is making the players happy, when we release something really popular, seeing the reaction is just fantastic, it is an awesome satisfying feeling. I know the feeling from the otherside having played the game for years, and to know I am contributing to giving people something they're going to really enjoy is just epic.

Pwninator

Question 145: Guthan's or Dharok's?

JagexMaz

Answer: Squirrels

WhoAmI100

Question 146: Is there going to be any possibility of bringing Evil Trees and/or Crashed Stars into old school? This may give skillers and other players that like to do skilling a reward for doing these activities.

JagexMaz

Answer: We would prefer to avoid making OSRS a daily or weekly grind of having to find D&D events.

burdturgler1154

Question 147: Do you prefer the latest version of RS or OSRS? Did you play RS when you were younger?

JagexMaz

Answer: I love both and I play both.

KimJongEwww

Question 148: What is the ETA for raids? I think they'll play a big part in reinvigorating OSRS even more.

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Late summer

Nicashi

Question 149: How do you make sure the game doesn't become unrecognisable and loses the oldschool feel?

JagexMaz

Answer: By living and breathing oldschool and by listening to our players.

Jagex_Weath

Answer: Players that are very passionate about keeping this feeling being responsible for all content that's added to the game

Viperionrs

Question 150: Could we ever see in game characters based on you guys? the oldschool team have done such a brilliant job, you deserve to be in the game.

JagexMaz

Answer: Some of us already are.. just not in an overtly obvious way. :-)

Xelnastoss

Question 151: so this version of OSRS is actually being updated TIL

does this eman the possibility of RS3 skills being moved and ported into OSRS? since the community really just wanted to keep the graphics and gameplay rather then completly abandon the new things?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: does this eman the possibility of RS3 skills being moved and ported into OSRS?

While possible, this is almost certainly not going to happen. With a 75% minimum approval rate and a community that loves things the way they were, new skills are hard to make happen.

If a new skill happens it will likely be one made specifically with Old School in mind. This makes it easier for us to guarantee the content fits what the community want from the game.

The-Gamble

Question 152: How have my ingame bug reports asking to be hired as a QA dude after you hire another developer been received? Are they detailed enough to get most of the bugs fixed or have some of them been lacking? It put a smile on my face seeing the one related to thieving from the baked goods stall for the Fremmenik Diaries being fixed.

ModJohnC

Answer: Finding bugs is a a very small aspect of being a QA Analyst on OSRS; and we do not accept applications via bug report forms. But good job finding these tiny issues please do continue!

CootiesRS

Question 153: Opinions on the nxt client and possibly any other content that rs3 has released?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: The NXT client is absolutely incredible. It is amazing to see the game look so huge!

zGambit

What was the most enjoyable piece of content in OSRS to code?

JagexMaz

Answer: I really enjoy QoL updates. They're so varied and you get to fix usually horrible old code and make it all shiny and new. Very satisfying.

srosas

Question 154: As developers, how do you feel when some youtubers or streamers make a more than suficient living out of playing games little to no knowledge of all te complexity that lies behind Game Development?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: I think it's amazing that there's so much appetite for people to watch Old School Runescape content on Twitch, Youtube and any other platforms. :)

vivanick1

Question 155: As someone currently studying a Computer Science degree, is it worth looking into the games industry anymore or is it too saturated?

JagexMaz

Answer: I think the more relevant question is what you want to do. If you want to work in games, go for it.

JagexJed

Answer: As a Computer Science graduate I can relate to people telling me that the games industry was too saturated and/or impossible to get into throughout my degree.

With Computer Science (and the games industry) becoming increasingly popular, my advice would be to build up a strong portfolio of game development projects that you can send off along with your CV.

bronzevscrub

Question 156: As a player of 10 years (since 2006), are Andrew or Paul Gower still working at Jagex?

JagexMaz

Answer: No, Andrew and Paul left to persue other things several years back. We still have Ian tho, he's our engine developer on OSRS.

Jagex_Weath

Answer: They're not but Ian Gower is the engine developer for OldSchool :)

JagexJed

Answer: Not any more, but we've got the third Gower brother (Ian) here on the OSRS team as our engine developer.

chancehl

Question 157: Have you guys ever considered doing a massive offense quashing wave? I know a lot of players who have been banned (myself included) who have broken the rules and subsequently learned from their mistakes who would love to play again.

I don't know the business model, but I'd imagine the money Jagex would receive from a ban quashing wave would be of far greater worth than the amount of players they'd lose to people taking advantage of their second chance.

Jagex_Weath

Answer: Although we have no plans to do this in the near future, it is something that has been mentioned before. If it did happen then the unban would almost certainly be accompanied by a large rollback of wealth and possibly XP.

BaconFreshBacon

I find the voting system in OSRS very intriguing! What have you guys learned from the voting system in the game, and would you change anything if you could?

From my uneducated perspective, it seems that people will tend to vote for the things that benefit themselves rather than other players. Such as, the number of PvM/Slayer updates as opposed to proposed skilling updates. (rip Artisan/Sailing) Of course, I don't have access to the same data as you guys - so I could just be talking garbage - but do you think this is healthy for the game?

Also, where are the proposed bacon updates?!

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Not that many large updates have actually failed polls! We have seen many things go through - often when they don't there are good reasons the community inform us about to why they voted no.

We can make changes to the offered content or offer it at a later time which fits them better.

Over time we've definitely gained a much better understnaidng of what the players want, and I feel it's made a massive improvement to the content we offer, how we offer it and how happy the players are because of it :D. I think it's a fantastic way for us to do our development, it can be frustrating at times, as obviously we have personal opinions too, and one of my designs is generally something I always personally want to see - so if it fails it can be a little bit sad :P

UK_Dev

Question 158: Hey there, thank you for the AMA. I am just wondering what advice you could give me as I teaching myself C++ with hopes of getting into the games industry as a gameplay programmer but sadly do not a degree.

Also does not holding a degree really hurt my chances of potential employment?

JagexJed

Answer: Here at Jagex, a lot of the developers (including Ash) have no formal education in programming. I personally studied Computer Science at university, but had been programming games long before that.

A degree can certainly help you get job interviews, but a strong portfolio is equally important. I'm sure if you can demonstrate your skills, a company wouldn't be too concerned about formal education.

The_Karmadyl

Question 159: Already asked some other questions and waiting for those to get answered, but did any of the current staff members themselves vote for the return of OSRS servers?

JagexJed

Answer: I wasn't a staff member at the time, but I voted for the return of OSRS, it's what got me back into RuneScape after playing from 2005-2009.

mikes_username_lol

Question 160: I am curious about the developer perspective. Do you maintain the original codebase or do you take the current EoC client and old-schoolify it? Maintaining 20 year old spaghetti does not sound like fun. Are you going to port the old school version to the NXT engine? (all new C++ instead of the current Java for ppl who don't know)

JagexJed

Answer: OSRS is essentially just a back-up of the game from 2007.

We are developing using the tools and in-house (RuneScript) language they had back at the time.

Redowadoer

Question 161: Runescape has a reputation for being one of the most grindiest MMORPGs there is - it's fun at first, but quickly devolves into hours of grinding (or cheating using scripts) to gain levels. What are your thoughts on this?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: That seems pretty accurate. But we love it. It doesn't devolve for many, many people - it is just the next challenge.

There are many non-grindy pieces of content and ways to play, too. Personally, I've never really been someone who can grind out stats. I prefer to find fun and interesting ways to get the most out of the game without having to do so.

It is a big game, there are loads of ways to play it!

JagexMaz

Answer: It's how you choose to play it. I don't play it for numbers, so I don't grind. I play it for exploration and fun. If I'm not having fun, I do something else.

scubaruxrw

Question 162: Why did players have to start over when old runescape came out?

JagexJed

Answer: The old savegames were not part of the archive used to restore the 2007 servers, and the savegames from RS3 don't have backwards compatibility, if that makes sense.

Pakaru

Question 163: Is this Runescape 1 or 2? Whats the deal with player v player? Heard it got removed from even the wilderness.

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Old School RuneScape is based on a game build from the RuneScape 2 era.

Back in December 2007, PvP was removed from the game and a trade restriction added in order to prevent the selling of gold. We don't have these restrictions so you can PvP all you want!

PlatypusThatMeows

Question 164: How come my old rs character was gone?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Old School RuneScape and RuneScape are separate games. Your save game from RuneScape doesn't carry over into Old School.

klawehtgod

Question 165: Is there anything you can do large-scale to stop websites from making accounts that just spam "Go to our website and buy Gold!" messages all the time?

They fill the chat at the Grand Exchange and it's pretty frustrating. I report every chance I get (Rule 9: Advertising Websites) but I would to see about a large scale effort to stop this.

Jagex_Weath

Answer: We ban a lot of these accounts as they're going through tutorial island but unfortunately some do manage to slip through. I'm working on a load of stuff at the moment that should help to further reduce the spam

Wonderingperson

Question 166: About how much of the game will a non-member get out of this old school runescape?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Well over half of the skills, a massive portion of the game world and a collection of some of the best quests with a whole lot more behind all that.

Exploration I think is the best thing about starting to play RS :)

kspmatt

Question 167: i'm always late to these things but i make it a point to ask what is you're favorite pizza toppings?

JagexMaz

Answer: Plum sauce base with aromatic duck topping :-D

phillipay

Question 168: This question comes from my insane ignorance, but what is the reason behind not being able to take a character you've poured hours into and using it on the RSOS servers?

JagexMaz

Answer: The save games when we resurrected the 07 game were in RS3 format which was not backwards compatible with 07. You can still use the same account, but the character will start from scratch on 07.

JagexJed

Answer: The servers were launched from a back-up of the 2007 game, which unfortunately did not include the player savegames.

We can't transfer account saves across from RS3 due to all the new data stored on them that wouldn't apply to OSRS.

Strong_Don

Question 169: I found this http://imgur.com/F3CV3N9 before I graduated College and thought of OSRS. What does the team think?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Banish the God of Chaos!!!

WuSin

Question 170: Since OSRS started, has there been any major bugs such as duplication glitches and being able to walk through walls, with such a small team how do you A. prevent this and B. fix them when people have already used them.. roll back servers?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Being small makes communication incredibly easy, meaning less project management shuffling etc.

We approach everything with, tools will only help us, rather than get in the way and just get things done. In Quality assurance, we really look for the best people, people who can really think on their feet, quickly determine what needs to be looked at based on their game knowledge, technical knowledge provided by the developer etc.

When the team started, they had obviously experienced working in the larger main RS3 game for many years, and had that experience to base their decisions on when coming up with our project flow, which we tweak and tweak and constantly make improvements to.

Walrus_Spiral

Question 171: How close are the Old School mods? Do you all hang out after work? Go to a pub together occasionally? Get together in a cc in your private accounts and go to KBD masses together?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: We all get along remarkably well, we love working together! It isn't rare to see a bunch of us at our local pub.

Kubatykurl

Question 172: How often do you guys play the game on your own accs? And what do you do when you for example cut a yew and see an obvious botter, do you insta smash him with the banhammer?

Ty for making rs great again!

Mod_Ronan

Answer: I know that Mods Archie and Jed are online, grinding away every day. I hop on pretty regularly to play with friends.

what do you do when you for example cut a yew and see an obvious botter, do you insta smash him with the banhammer?

We send the name over to Mod Weath, our banhammer wielding bot busting expert, and they are swiftly obliterated.

AR-Reloading

Question 173: Do you prefer OSRS over RS3 yourselves?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: There's a reason we're on this team. :P

On our Quality Assurance job descriptions, we have 'Must prefer Old School to reality'.

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Personally, yes. RS3 just isn't the game for me anymore. I'm a fan of the old combat system.

HarryLillis

Question 174: I don't understand what's meant by Old School here. It still seems to be in 3D. Is there a way to play Runescape 1 or isn't there?

JagexMaz

Answer: RS Classic is still available. New logins from old accounts are open until the end of the year I believe. Then if you've logged in during this period you can play whenever you like.

rockidol

Question 175: What is your favorite thing that you added to OSRS?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: Abyssal Sire.

Seterrith

Question 176: First, let me say that I love that you guys brought back osrs!

The only thing frustrating for me is the botters. Trying to get my woodcutting lvl up has been harder and harder it seems.

Are bots still getting sought-after in OSRS?

Jagex_Weath

Answer: We ban more bots today than we have ever done in the past, around 150k last month alone! I'd say we also ban more bots than any other game that I'm aware of...

I'd definitely say that we're still committed to seeking them out :)

flexiverse

Question 177: Why do you think old school is popular? What's missing in new games ???

Mod_Kieren

Answer: The fact we're so community driven is what I think, we listen so closely to player opinions - we are all active on Twitter and reddit taking into account feedback and reacting to it ASAP.

Doing weekly updates, which are often full of player suggestions, and are all polled to the OSRS community, requiring 75% to vote yes to something for it to happen.

The players really do have a massive part of the control over the game, and I think that is a massive thing.

On top of that, our community is fantastic, the presence on Twitch and Youtube is awesome, players really get involved with that, and on the game they meet many other people and make new friendships and just really enjoy it - beyond just playing the actual content.

jpmac098

Question 178: Do you guys work exclusively on OSRS, or do you sometimes work in tandem with RS3?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: As part of the company, there are often opportunities for people to contribute to the other products, so yes occasionally - but we spend 99% of our time on Old School.

SHADOW_CARL

Question 179: I don't play Old School RS but I used to back in the day. But I watch A Friend, B0aty, and Sparc Mac almost everyday. Do you think without the help of those video makers DMM would be as successful? What is making DMM bring in such a big crowd to OSRS? Because I could not PLAY CLAN MAN MODE!

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Do you think without the help of those video makers DMM would be as successful?

Definitely not. Those you mentioned, and so many more, pushed Deadman Mode to a huge audience. It wouldn't have been the same success it was without their help.

What is making DMM bring in such a big crowd to OSRS?

It is such an irresistible idea to a RuneScape player. 5x experience, a fresh start where everyone is on a level playing field, excitement... But I think the key factor there is the fresh start. There is something that draws people into a situation where they have a shot at being #1.

Forest-G-Nome

Question 180: So this is the first i've ever heard of old school runescape, it sounds awesome. I loved the old runescape. My question is, how old is old school? I don't recall what major changes happened when, but is this before or after they added PIN's to accounts? IIRC a lot of the more unliked design choices came after PIN's were added.

Mod_Ronan

Answer: Our game is based on RuneScape from August 2007. This is right before the removal of PvP, before the addition of the trade limit. We are pretty much in the golden spot right before the most controversial changes were made.

littleloftus

Question 181: is a fight caves 2 coming to osrs?

Mod_Kieren

Answer: A sequel to the Fight Caves will potentially be coming in Early 2017!

Mod_Ronan

Answer: We will be discussing this later on in the year as we would like to release something of this nature in early 2017.

Chooseday

Question 182: What took so long to develop Old School RS? Was pride in the way at first?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: I wasn't around for the original release of Old School, I was still just a player. From my perspective, it didn't take too long at all.

The big change that saw a lot of old players disengage with RuneScape was the evolution of combat update. That happened in November 2012. It was only in February 2013 that we saw the release of Old School.

Considering the time spent talking about doing Old School, running the poll to see if people wanted it and actually making the game functional, I think that November -> February is pretty reasonable!

Dilsauce

Question 183: Is it true that by clicking off your opponent between hits gives you a better chance to hit higher or more consistent?

Mod_Ronan

Answer: It is not true.

jonathanvigil

Question 184: What is something the community can do to help you guys be more productive? Does all the hate and circle jerking of the community slow things down?

JagexAsh

Answer: There's good feedback to be found, nonetheless :) As long as players are willing to take the time to explain what they'd like to see