Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So it's been an interesting couple of months.
It certainly has, Power to the Players really kind of opened our eyes to all sorts of different things.
It's been really interesting giving up that power but working with the people who really know the game the best
has really given us some amazing outcomes really and working with them to tailor all of the individual updates.
The response to the polls when we announced the initiative at Christmas was amazing
but there was that fly in the ointment, there was questions about EoC, questions about combat.
Can the whole thing be changed? Can all these little things be changed?
We tried quite hard last year to improve the system, to add in content that really showcased it
but after a year there are still a lot of players for who it's not working out for them
and we're really serious about Power to the Players then we have to find a way to give them an option to get the old gameplay back.
Y'know, with Power to the Players we've got that opportunity to ask those questions as well.
And ask questions that previously it's been difficult for us to get a gauge of what everyone's really thought.
We want people to play EoC because they want to, rather than because they have to and that means improving EoC but it also means offering an alternative as well.
And that's what lead us to Legacy Mode.
Legacy mode is a way for us to bring back the old combat gameplay inside of the modern game.
What I'm imagining is that there's a simple button you can press when you log in and it changes the screen to look how it used and play how it used to.
So, you'll have Special Attacks in combat, you won't have an Action Bar, you won't need to use Abilities, your stats for combat and buttons will be on your minimap,
you can just type to chat, the layout will be how you recognise it from before. I think we can probably do the old fixed window layout as well.
Yeah, it's so important that Legacy Mode is inclusive. You can play in the same servers as everyone else. You can play in the same areas.
The community can still play together but if you prefer one combat system over the other, you can just get on with gameplay.
So, you reckon we can get almost exactly the same? How close do you think it can be?
I think we can get damn close. I mean, there are going to be some areas of difference because
Legacy Mode will still need to be in the modern game and it will need to be competitive as well so it'll need to use dual wielding,
the combat triangle rebalanced so magic and ranged are better, it will have that as well because it's in the same game world.
It might be the case that we'll need different servers for people in PvP to fight each other with the old system or with the new system.
We might even have servers where both systems work and can be used to fights against each other.....just to see what happens.
I think, however we do it, we need to make sure that if you like EoC you get to continue playing it
but you also have a way for the old system to come back in a way that doesn't split the community,
doesn't mess up all the updates, or the update rate that we're doing. That's important I think.
This is the poll to find out the overall feeling; whether something like a legacy mode is what the players of new and old want.
It's odd for me, we just don't have all the answers, we don't know how all these things are going to work with each other,
because both systems have got their own unique ways of looking at the game and working with the players
and making sure this is a collaborative effort, I think it's a massive deal for us.
So this vote is a little different than previous votes we've done.
Well it's open now, it's going to be open for two weeks and the poll is in the game, so you've got to log in to vote.
Normally Power To The Players' polls are just for members but this is really important,
we're going to make an exception so free players, if their account was made before 2013, they can vote in it here as well.
So if you really care about RuneScape, you don't have to log in and be a member,
as long as you've got an old account, you can make a vote because we really care about your opinion.
Yes, we want to give everyone a voice.
We won't be abandoning the new combat system at all. All of the improvements that we've got on the Beta server at the moment
and a lot of the new content that we've got in mind, it's really built with the new combat system at it forefront
and we don't want to abandon that, we're really proud of the system, we know lots of people really enjoy it,
what we want to do is make sure that the people who like the new game and the people that like the old game can play together and be happy.
We know there's going to be lot of questions about this, there's bound to be questions about, will this bring back level 3 skillers
or will a pure account still be a viable option in the wilderness and the simple answer is we just don't know yet.
I think the combat level calculation is something that is going to be a challenge as well and maybe it sits outside of the Legacy poll itself.
We're looking forward to working with the players and if the vote passes we'll invest all our time and effort
in trying to answer all of those questions that we know are going to be the burning issues for the players.
I hope the players are as excited as us about this. We need them to vote.
So, into the game, onto the forums, there're blogs that we've written, there're newsposts, all sorts of information about Legacy Mode
and when they've made up their mind they can just go to the Community tab which is one of the little buttons that exists in the screen,
it's the one with the two little people, click on that, open it up and there's a Vote Now tab and that's where you'll find the Legacy vote,
and all sorts of other votes as well which all impact on the future of the game.