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Dev Blog: 2014

With the new year now with us it seems the right time to talk about what the future of Old School holds for you. Over the last few weeks we have been working on a plan for the next 6 months and we want to present that to you now.

In November we held a survey, the results of which you can see here , to ask what was important to you and this has formed the basis of the plan for the next 6 months.

What will be polling?
PvM
PvP
Skilling
The big issues
Holiday events

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What will be polling?

We want to remain with the three week cycle of polls which means that we will aim to do around 8 polls in the next 6 months. The polls will consist of the quality of life updates which you are used to. In each poll we will also be targeting one of three areas (PVM, PVP and skilling) to add new content or improve existing content. From the results of the survey we hope to offer a selection of PvM polls, PvP polls and skilling polls, we also want to deliver two of these through Player Designed Content competitions so you are even more in control.

One of the most important things to us is to ensure that any update that passes a poll is delivered to you as quickly as possible. If there are some big updates you want that will take extra time, we may delay some polls to focus on the delivery of the updates.

One of the key things we want to ensure is that we are able to react to what you want as quickly as possible which is why we aren't going to plan when these polls are going to take place. When it becomes time for us to consider a new poll we will look at what is important to you and ensure that the theme of the poll meets what you need.

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PvM

Your answers to the survey suggested that the reason you like PvM is to fight brand new monsters which are profitable to kill. You also like to kill monsters with your friends and have them drop new equipment that helps you level a variety of skills. So, this are all things we will bear in mind when we look at what we can offer you in these polls. There are numerous ideas that you have put forward to us already such as the Kraken boss, combat pets, Soul Snatcher minigame and necromancy; all of which are possibilities.


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PvP

The first poll of this year will be a reworking of the wilderness in order to encourage more activity. Conversations with the community started about this back in December and we will put a dev blog out shortly with more information on how we have used your ideas so the debate can intensify. Any update to PvP will be designed to make PvP profitable, encourage players to fight in groups and with the possibility of adding new items to fight with, the things you told us were most important to you.

Some of the PvP ideas you have come to us with are clan wars, a bounty hunter mechanic and equipment for pures. One question that we would like you to talk about is whether you think the Bounty Hunter mechanic would work best in the Wilderness or in a separate arena? Or perhaps a separate area entirely?


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Skilling

You told us that the most important aspects of skilling to you were that it needs to be profitable, that gaining XP needs to be engaging and that you want to be able to skill with your friends. So, we will be looking at how we can incorporate these into the two skilling polls that we offer. One idea that was presented to us during the Player Designed Content competition was being able to raise your own animals, something we think is a really exciting prospect.

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The big issues

There are two major issues that you are facing which we want to ensure we deal with over the next 6 months. The first, and unsurprisingly, is bots. We want to be able to remove the bot menace from disturbing your experience so you can enjoy the game the way you want to. Later this week we have a meeting with the anti-bot team and from this meeting we will draw up a plan to achieve our aims. We may not be able to share everything we plan with you, but what we can share we will.



The second issue is trading. We know world 1 is very difficult to trade in and we want to solve this too. I am sure a lot of you have just had images of the Grand Exchange run through your mind, however we don't have to introduce it in the way it was originally, there is no trade cap so we can do things differently. Most importantly the solution has to be right for you so before long we will need to start a discussion on what the solution should be.

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Holiday events

You may initially think that there is only one holiday in the next six months, Easter. However, we know you guys enjoy holiday events and so we will be ramping up community activity around Valentine's Day, Old School's first birthday (22nd February), RS2's Birthday (29th March) April Fools and Midsummer too. There is going to be plenty for everyone to get involved in.

As with everything Old School, you decide where the game goes and if the community suddenly decides the most important thing are pink ponies and purple elephants then we will ditch the plan and do that instead.

Mods Ash, John C, Mat K and Reach