I've just come back from several months away from the game, so I didn't hear about the Wilderness changes until they were in place.
To say that I'm pleasantly surprised by the end result would be putting it mildly. The Wilderness actually
feels
scary now; I just did my first Warbands run in a dog's age, and it's incredible what adding a bunch of high-level aggressive monsters everywhere (and some randomly spawning flash mobs) can do to make you feel like the place actively wants you dead.
And yet, despite some of the randomized mechanics, it feels like a "fair" level of threat, unlike the possibility of getting steamrolled by a co-ordinated bunch of PKers who only want to make you miserable. Getting mauled to death out there actually feels like a punishment for being unprepared. And best of all, even on the low populations worlds that I frequent, this feeling of impeding doom never goes away just because other players rarely venture into the place.
I'm particularly impressed that Jagex managed to pull this off without getting rid of Dangerous PvP entirely. I was convinced that the only way to fix the Wilderness was for it to go the way of the Duel Arena and completely reworked from its original design, but Jagex has proven me wrong. Somehow they found a way to give (almost) everyone what they wanted without it being at the expense of someone else. Turning skulls into a PvP marker instead of a lingering debuff was pretty genius (and it ending as soon as you leave the Wilderness is a massive quality of life improvement for Warbands, etc.)
Most impressively, they nailed it on their first try (minus a few growing pains that I'm sure will be fixed in the coming week); I was worried that we'd have an awkward trial-and-error phase (see: how most of the previous Wilderness changes failed), but no, things are already looking great.
Chapeau, Jagex. This was quite the pleasant surprise to return to.
06-Aug-2022 09:54:39