[Informer Article] A Dead Wilderness

Mr Bistro · **Posted:** February 16th, 2015, 7:08 pm

Over the past few years with the return of the wilderness, many people have attempted to come up with solutions to the lack of players that use it. The problem is, there is no one solution to the problem and that so many ideas are misguided.

In conclusion, there is no one way to fix the wilderness. Nevertheless, there are ways to fix it and it should be understood that it would be a large undertaking. No idea is a bad idea when the content is already broken. Any help on the issue leads us all closer to having a revamped and glorious wilderness and game once again.

This was originally posted as an Informer Runescape article.

Adbot · **Posted:** February 16th, 2015, 7:08 pm

Lord Rickles · **Posted:** February 17th, 2015, 2:13 pm

A VIDEO Informer Article?! This changes things...

Shane · **Posted:** February 17th, 2015, 4:03 pm

It's an experiment we thought we'd try out. We'd be happy to hear what everyone thinks about the idea going forward. Of course we won't be abandoning text articles, that is and always will be our bread and butter.

Lord Rickles · **Posted:** February 17th, 2015, 6:19 pm

Now that I've had time to sit and listen to the video, I'd like to comment on topic this time!

An interesting topic, Mr. Bistro, and great insights on the current state of the wilderness. While I agree with most of your statements, I think that it would be a heck of a beast to revamp the wildy.

That being said, the wildywyrm update makes LEAPS forward in promoting a healthy wilderness ecosystem. Degradable weapon enhancers, slayer task monsters, and a group encouraged miniboss version of that monster all make great strides in promoting a positive flow of players into the wild, which in turn should get PKers to return as well. I'm actually going to talk about this more in depth in my article this month, so consider it a supplemental dose to yours!

Again, thanks for the thoughts! On a side note - any way to get a transcript of your dialog in the video? While the added visual is nice, I can't really respond to it based on memory.

Mr Bistro · **Posted:** February 18th, 2015, 5:15 pm

It may not match the video completely as it was only a script. But I can put this up as well.

Over the past few years with the return of the wilderness, many people have attempted to come up with solutions to the lack of players that use it. The problem is, there is no one solution to the problem and that so many ideas are miss guided.
On August 13th 2001, RuneScape’s Wilderness was released. Its fantastic success became embedded into the games culture spurring massive clan wars and glorious player killing. To me this update was unique in that every combat situation was new and dangerous. This was something that bossing or slayer simply couldn’t come close to.
December 10th 2007. The wilderness was gone, replaced by Bounty hunter and clan wars. Though still located in the wilderness, it changed up the way player killing felt and it would never feel the same again. When the wilderness finally returned on the first of February 2011, a little over 4 years had gone by and with it, 4 years of new content that differentiated the game from its past self. Even still this was not a point of no return.
When the Evolution of Combat came out towards the end of 2012, many people did not like it. Though many improvements have been made and many different versions of combat have been released to help people learn and grow with the new combat style, it did not pick up well for PK’rs. Today a player can look in the wilderness and see empty battlefields where once epic fights happened throughout the day.
I personally love the modern form of combat that Jagex gave to us. They continue to fine tune it for better performance and it feels much more interactive then it ever would have before the release. Before I go on, I want to say that the EoC is not the only reason that pking is a dead sport.
PvP in RuneScape is a completely different animal in the game then it was 8 years ago. With high level weapons and vast gaps in combat skill, there has never been such a large wound to the pvp community. Many of the players from the past have long since left leaving the newer players with a keep all loose non mentality and that doesn’t fit in the pvp puzzle. The biggest issue with the wilderness, is that it was gone and remains gone for too long. The question for fixing the wilderness become more of a question as to how to get players to risk their hard work.
Ideas are being brought forward on the RuneScape’s forums daily. I’m going to pick a few of the most common ideas and explain why they would or would not work.
Idea number one. Add high level resources into the wilderness.
This idea would not work because the wilderness would not exclusively have these items anymore. So many high level options for gear exists outside of the wilderness like player owned ports gear, or boss drops from god wars and kalphite king. Even if the items for the wilderness were exclusive and high leveled why would I risk my own items to get items that are of equal or lesser value? Even if the items were at par with high level gear, the only people out in the wilderness would be high level skillers obtaining the gear with no other items with them.
The correct approach would have to be more along the lines of getting boosts like portents or scrimshaws and auras that boost outside of the wilderness but higher in the wilderness, the boost would have to be tradable and degradable giving players a reason to return to collect these items no matter their level.
Idea Number two add bosses to the wilderness.
This idea could actually work if the bosses items that it dropped were untradeable and degradable. The reason for that is because them items being gained from the player or group should never be the goal of the pk’er. The goal of the pk’er should be to get the gear of the group that is bossing. There are many other things that need to be considered for this fix like, how would the people bossing be able to handle so much damage if they were being pk’ed? Should there be a secondary barrier that lasts during a kill and fade as the kill time drags on? I think this would be a good idea but not a full on fix.
The winderness needs more than one fix to make it work and the items that are to be coveted in the wilderness should be that of the player you killed to get them. The combat needs to be simplified and the variables on abilities should be reduced so people can get into learning how to pk. The way it works today doesn’t offer a player that chance to learn, the matches happen to quickly and thus no one new can learn how to player kill.
In conclusion, there is no one way to fix the wilderness, but there are ways to fix it and it should be understood that it would be a large undertaking. No idea is a bad idea when the content is already broken. Any help on the issue leads us all closer to having a revamped and glorious wilderness and game once again.

Remember that it doesn't match the video completely but it should fit very well.

Lord Rickles · **Posted:** February 18th, 2015, 7:52 pm

Thanks Bistro!

Like I said, my article actually pairs yours quite well by covering the Wildywyrms, but I want your opinion - this falls under the idea number 2 in your video, so how do you think the execution was? Do you think doing this a few more times for different creatures or maybe revamping old areas would have the same effect and really revitalize the wilderness?

Adbot · **Posted:** February 18th, 2015, 7:52 pm

Duke Juker · RSBandB Donor since 07/01/2010

This is an important topic to address, Bistro. I'm glad you are looking into it.

I agree that the Wilderness is dead for the most part and is near impossible to revive at this point. However, rather than looking at solutions to fix the problem, I think it's more important to focus on what "killed" the Wilderness.

Although you mention Bounty Hunter and Clan Wars as being a major culprit, Bistro, I think the removal of free trade played the biggest part. The fact of the matter is that people didn't PvP just to PvP (at least not to my knowledge). Most people did it to make money. Now I'm not saying these people didn't enjoy PvPing, they most certainly did. But it was the fact that they could make money off doing something they enjoy (which is really a major component to RPGs as a whole and absolutely true of Runescape) that made PvP in the Wilderness popular and viable. By taking away unlimited drops and restricting PvP to select areas, it made the Wilderness a boring place.

Once Jagex decided that the Wilderness should be brought back (and trust me, it was Jagex's decision, not the players), by that point too much time had passed. The game had moved forward while the Wilderness remained a bleak and pointless part of the Runescape landscape. The majority of the PvP community had either left the game or moved on to other parts of the game. This created a major problem as 1) the interest in PvPing in the Wilderness was gone and 2) even if one wanted to PvP, no one knew how to do this anymore if they had not kept in practice. With the changes to combat a little later on, this became the final nail in the coffin for the Wilderness. There was simply not enough time to rekindle interest in Wilderness PvPing at this point. With a whole new combat system and new equipment, all bets were off and it left people scratching their heads as to "What the hell happened here?"

In summary, the Wilderness was killed off by a desire to fix the issues bots brought to the game. In order to fix one problem, Jagex sacrificed the Wilderness and the PvP community without considering the long term consequences. Although I can't speak for Jagex but only conjecture, I assume that the developers thought that the PvP community would continue to live on and flourish despite the removal of the Wilderness. This turned out to be false. Over time, the PvP community died off with only the most diehard of players sticking around, but leaving hardly any notable community behind. Although people wanted the Wilderness back, the majority of these people weren't PvPers and probably just wanted the Wilderness to come back regardless of anything it may have to offer. With a new combat system and little time to adjust, any would be PvPers simply found it unfeasible to take up PvPing as there was little interest monetarily or otherwise.

If there ever was any hope to fix the Wilderness, it would be to make it a viable means of earning money in the game as opposed to many other methods. But even with this, there needs to be a concerted effort to generate interest in the Wilderness on Jagex's part. It can't just be "Oh hey, look at what there is to do in the Wildy now!" type of effort, but rather a "The Wilderness is an epic place where you can make money, have fun, and enhance your game play experience by participating." If Jagex can make the case that the Wilderness is a fun place to be, this will be how the Wilderness can be brought back to life.