The subject of rare items is one which has been at the forefront of the community since before Old School came out. The discussion surrounding rare items has been varied with everyone having their own opinion on, if and how they should be implemented into Old School. From the amount of talk about this subject we could see that we would have to act on this very soon, but how could we do it fairly so that everyone could have an informed say?
The biggest challenge for us was how to deal with all the “ifs” that were out there, “I would like rares back if….” and we wanted to put out this Dev Blog to show you why the upcoming vote for rare items will be the way it is.
Simply asking if rare items should come back isn’t going to answer the question properly. Analysis of the Official Rares Discussion thread showed us that we needed to clarify what rare items are and give you the opportunity to answer these three questions.
1. Would you like rare items return in some form?
2. If you vote for rare items to return, would you like the currently tradeable rare items to remain tradeable?
3. How would you like rare items return?
Clarifying what rare items are is easy, here’s a list:
Tradable Rare Items
-
Easter eggs from 2002
-
Pumpkin from 2001
-
Halloween masks
-
Santa Hat
-
Christmas crackers
-
Party Hats
-
Disk of returning
- Half full wine jug
Untradable Rare Items
-
Bunny ears
-
Scythe
-
Yo-yo
-
Rubber Chicken
-
Zombies Head
-
Hats and Scarves from Christmas 2005
-
Marionettes
-
Easter ring
-
Skeleton set
-
Jack lantern’s mask
-
Reindeer hat
-
Wintumber tree
- War ship
Questions one and two are straightforward, but your answer to question three will depend on whether you vote for rare items to return and whether they return as tradeable or not. This means that we need to poll these questions a week before we poll you on how you would like the items to return.
We pulled the most popular ideas on how to deliver rare items into the game from the Official Rares Discussion thread to create a list of options which you can have a say on. If you vote for some items to be tradeable, we will run this poll for both tradeable rare items and non tradeable rare items so you can decide how you would like each type to be delivered.
The current version of the polls and the dates for when these will happen are listed below. We’d love to get your feedback on these.
Rare Item Poll 1 (To run from midday from 10th April 2013 to midday 17th April)
1. Would you like rare items return in some form?
2. If you vote for rare items to return, would you like the currently tradable rare items to remain tradable?
Rare Item Poll 2 (To run from midday from 17th April 2013 to midday 24th April)
Which of these ways would you like rare items to be distributed? Each of these questions have a yes or no answer.
1. Distribute them using similar mechanics as you did before (dropping them, holiday events)
2. Appear as a very rare reward from a treasure trails
3. Distribute them through very rare monster drops
4. Have an NPC shop you can buy rare items from for a small amount of GP
5. Have an NPC shop you can buy rare items from for a large amount of GP
6. Have them given out as rewards from community events
7. Give one of each rare item to every old school player
8. Have them appear as very rare drops when skilling
9. Introduce new seasonal events for each of them
Please make sure you only access the poll through http://oldschool.runescape.com and not follow links from third parties to the polls. We won’t send out exclusive invites to take part in any poll.
05-Apr-2013 12:59:56 - Last edited on 09-Apr-2013 18:39:49 by Mod Mat K
