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We can destroy or we can cherish...the choice is ours

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Elf Parade

Having done the Christmas Event, Josh called me over to Falador World 36. I had no idea what it was for, but there's normally a reason for his madness, so I headed over. From what I gather, one of his friends, SANTA1862, was going to be hosting a giant parade at 3pm GMT, then Jagex decided to release the Christmas Event at 2:30 and people were busy doing that instead of turning up to the parade.   Slowly, more people did turn up and green outfits were handed out so that people would look like Santa's Elves in a mysterious train choo chooing around Runescape. We set off, following Santa up towards Edgeville in a line of green.     When we reached the bank, there were shouts of 'Merry Christmas!', 'Happy Halloween!' and 'Happy Solstice!' and then, unknown to me, several of the other Elves had Toy Dolls on them which were all released at once to a few surprised looks from people hanging in the bank.   Heading on from Edgeville, somebody tagged on to the back of the line (behind me) wearing ghost robes and a Dragon Hally. If I'm not mistaken, it was Death come to take me away, the spike on the end edging closer and closer to the back of my neck with each step. A brief discussion between the ghost, myself, Josh and Merch solved the issue and we carried on to Varrock West bank to repeat what had been done in Edgeville.   The next walk was slightly longer - all the way to Draynor Village and en-route my internet connection temporarily died and I had to run to catch up with the train again. Or, as Josh put it, yet another reason not to take Neo to the Corporeal Beast. :P     More Dolls were released in Draynor Bank and then we headed on to Rimmington House portal to use a Camelot Portal in somebody's house to quickly get across the world. I tried about 5 different names before finally getting into the house and then couldn't see anybody at the teleport spot. Help! Thankfully, a short wait meant the others reappeared and we headed on to Catherby beach to release the Dolls and Seasons Greetings for the Fisherpeople there.   Finally, it was a walk down to Yanille, passing Ignatius Vulcan (is it sad that I know his name? :D) who I 'mistook' for a player, so let out my greetings to. Thankfully, it's the thought that counts, so nothing wrong there...   Further on, Josh lured me towards the Bush south of Ardougne which happened to be full of ripe berries for me to pick, so having complained that he was going to get us lost, a tyvm was issued for making me pick 10k worth of stuff that I otherwise would have missed out on. Reaching Yanille bank, there was the bragging about random junk we had sitting around in the bank that the other didn't as was as goodbyes and the end of a fun couple of hours. :P
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A Christmas Warble

The Christmas Event appeared yesterday afternoon, so it clearly needed completing. I popped in-game before the System Update countdown finished to position myself where the Wardrobe would appear in Draynor and logged out. After a couple of failures at reloading the game applet, it appeared and I was in! :D   The first thing to note was that there were particles in-game with a new graphics option, so off I head to look at the options for them.     Why is there a total failure at a scrollbar there? If you look at graphics options on the login screen, it's not there, so why is it there in-game? Argh!!!!! So, yeah, that put me in a slightly bad mood even before entering the wardrobe.   It had probably been a couple of minutes since the system update and already the Land of Snow was totally packed with people all being followed by Imps. With a bit of clicking, I found Marvin standing around near the entrance waiting for a chat and the event started. Off I head, laggily, to the Scourge's house only to find that just as laggy, so try reducing the graphics settings. No difference at all, so they get shot back up to normal, with an end result of ~5fps. :P   http://i48.tinypic.com/105r3x1.png   Clicking around, I find that whatever I do, I'm shouted at by a voice from upstairs until, after about 5 minutes, I notice a yellow dot on the minimap. Heading into the room with the dot, it's another 20 seconds of right-clicking until I find an NPC to talk to who isn't somebody else's darn imp!   Then was the need to find materials for the Robes. I'd already located all the searchable things in my muddle working out what to do in the first place, so it should have been fairly easy... except I failed to search the Cupboard with the Bedsheets in, sure that I'd looked at everything. It was also clear that others had exactly the same problem, so I think the tip for future content is: [/name]If you want to hide something for players to find, do not hide it in the same room that they initially in when told to find it.   Carry on, yeah, yeah, story's predictable - three ghosts, same ending, everybody lives happily every after.   [name=adorable-imp-summoning]Some of the conversations when summoning various characters in are rather amusing, though I'm sad that I couldn't be bothered to fetch my Camulet for that particular conversation. I also find the animation for the summoning totally adorable.     As for putting out the fires, I understand that there's a way to look at the order, reverse it and use that. Unfortunately, I was unable to see any order despite somebody shouting out what to do in public chat - for things like that, the signs need to be more noticeable than a short animation that a slight lag will mean you miss (as would having a large screen). I tried doing characters in alphabetical order which helped me bag the first two, although after that it was an annoying act of throwing water around (thankfully I'd picked up three Buckets otherwise it would have been even more irritating).   Overall, I loved the conversations with Scourge, hated having everybody else's imps visible, disliked the conversations with the Ice Queen and didn't like the 'puzzle'. Was it fun? Mostly. Did it feel slightly rushed? Yes. Am I going to go and do it on an alt? Probably not.
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Kbd Heads

After yesterday, I decided that I had to head back to the King Black Dragon today with the new-found knowledge that wearing Proselyte wouldn't mean the firebreath hits more and that it doesn't matter if you die with the Holy Wrench since you can get it back for free.   Wearing full Proselyte and my inventory packed with Sharks and Potions, the obelisk was kind enough to zap me directly to level 44 wilderness, so I ran over towards the KBD's lair and entered. It wasn't quite as much as a shock as the first time yesterday since I'd now had the experience of three previous entrances, so the DDS specs were unleashed followed by a few smacks of my Whip and it was dead within about 40 Prayer Points and 3 Sharks. :D   The world was less busy at this time of day, so the spawn took longer to appear, but when it did I was ready to kill it: 0-0-0-0-0-0 went the DDS specs. :D This kill wasn't anywhere near as fast as the first, requiring about 120 PPoints to kill, though it thankfully wasn't hitting very often. When it finally did die, there was a nice surprise sitting on the floor...     Kill #11. :lol:   The next kill on the trip went fine and left me with just enough supplies to attempt a 4th kill. As it's hitpoints slowly faded away, so did my supplies until I was left with 20 PPoints and a single Shark with the big, scary dragon, whose heads I had in my inventory, still on about 1/4 health. I thought I could make it as a couple of big hits came from my Whip, redbarring the KBD as my Prayer ran out, my last Shark eaten. But was it dead? No - a tiny sliver of green reappeared on the health bar. 0-0-0-0 I hit as my health reduced from 67 to 53 to 42.   Should I try and teleport out to save the heads or try and kill it and reap the rewards - it has a fairly low max hit, right? I chose the latter as I noticed my health orb turn green. In a panic, I drank a sip of Antipoison and saw a red splat appear on the KBD. It was dead and I had 25hp left. Phew!   I picked up the drops and teleported out before the next spawn appeared. It was a close battle and certainly a relief to be safe in Edgeville bank. :D Despite the free healing from the Monks around the corner, I nommed a couple of Lobsters to be on the safe side encase I'd missed the fact that I was poisoned or something before heading to the Monastery to be given free health and Prayer Points.   I then did a few more trips which went fairly well - one with a scraped 5 kills, another with a comfortable 5 and a couple with 4 kills. Getting there either went really well (a single obelisk) or felt like it took forever - there must be something wrong when it takes 12 obelisks to reach the one you want to be at. :lol:   The last trip should have been fairly normal, except I got distracted by the chat in Canting, so wasn't really paying attention to the KBD. On the first kill, I looked away from my health, typed something, looked back up and saw I was on 20hp! I quickly gobbled down several Sharks to bring myself to a more comfortable health level and carried on the kill in a panicky mood. Before the next spawn, I totally failed to drink any of the Potions, so when it came there was a rush of drinking half a dozen different concoctions to save myself - Antifire, Antipoison, Attack, Strength. Oh no, my Prayer had run out! *slurps a couple of doses of Prayer Potion and reactivates the prayers*   All that time, I'd forgotten about healing, so my health was uncomfortably low and once again I panic ate to heal myself. Once that was done, it was slightly more comfortable and the kill eventually came. I calmed myself down for a third kill, making sure I'd done all the prep I needed and was ready when it appeared. When the KBD was at about 3/4 health, somebody else came into the room and started attacking the dragon. Although it was one of those people who seems determined to steal your dragon and take it for themselves, I was grateful for the extra help and teleported out with the drop since my supplies were low.   This brings my total KBD kills to 31. :D
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Killing The King Black Dragon

Following the party yesterday, I have a month's membership, so what better way to use it than to try something new? :D   Since I'm totally unimaginative in this respect and have read all of Merch's tales of fighting off the King Black Dragon, I decided it sounded like a bit of fun - I only recall entering the KBD's lair once before to unlock the music. With this starting knowledge of nothing at all, I did a quick search and found this which gives a basic rundown on what to take for a basic run.   Helm, Glory, Top, Skirt, Cape, Dagger, Whip, Gloves, Shield and Potions were all happily sitting in my bank, although the rest I was slightly less sure about. Equipping the Dragon Boots showed that if I died, they'd be lost and with a shoddy internet connection that likes to go down with no notice, that's not good, so I stuck them back into the back and withdrew some Climbing Boots because they're cheap.   Then the Bracelet, fine, 2.5k on the GE - no problem. And Sharks - I've never used them properly in the past, so clearly had none in the bank and they cost a lot more than the 1k I was expecting, but I wasn't going to complain about something I don't want to catch myself and bought 1000 of them. Then was the Ring of Life which would be helpful to have - 15k! :D I didn't want to pay that much, so took some Diamonds and Gold Bars out of the bank, Gloried to Al Kharid and made 9 of them all by myself. :lol:   A rub of a Games Necklace whisked me off to the Wilderness Volcano where I summoned a Spirit Terrorbird and spent 5 minutes working out how to hand it some Sharks to carry. With that sorted out, I made my way to an obelisk and after 5 teles, I was in level 44 Wilderness as Merch noted that I should be. I ran over to the cage, potting up as I ran - Super Attack, Strength, Defence, Antipoison - all drunk, so I was ready to climb down the ladder. Among the Spiders it took me a good 10 seconds to find the lever which brought me into the KBD's lair.   I was expecting to need to be on my toes, but it didn't help that the KBD was attacking me before I'd even arrived, so over I ran, swiping it with four DDS specs. I remembered a point that Merch made about kills going faster if you don't switch to the Whip until you're sure it's poisoned, so I waited and waited, but it was down to about 2/3 health and not poisoned, so I gave up and switched.   At this point I realised that I was taking more damage than I was expecting and had eaten about 1/4 of the Sharks already... so I quickly put on Protect from Melee and recalled something Josh said about Piety being extremely useful, so turned that on too. Strangely, damage was still coming in fast. At that point I looked at the chatbox. Ohhhhhhhhh, I'd not drunk any of the Antifire Potion, so a sip of that reduced incoming damage. Killing was still slow, so I switched back to the DDS to see if it would make a difference - first hit and the KBD was poisoned, so back to the Whip to finish of a kill that took about 15 Sharks and dropped some Fire Runes. Not a good start. :lol:   Between spawns, I worked out how the Quick-Select Prayers work, so enabled them and picked up the Sapphire spawn sitting in the middle of the room to try and reduce losses. This time, I was ready with Prayers and killed it slightly quicker, but it still took ~10 Sharks to finish off, so I had to tele out with two kills under my belt.   Towards the end of the kill, the health thing had changed from red to green without me noticing, so having teled out, I found myself with a bit of a shock looking and noticing myself with 23hp. Closing the bank and watching a splat of poison appear showed what the problem was, so a sip of Antipoison solved that and I headed off to the Monastery for free healing and prayer points.   Restocked, with 12 doses of Prayer Potion rather than 8, I attempted to head off via the obelisks. Appearing in level 55 Wilderness, I was attacked by a bunch of Revs with Auto-retaliate on, so ran away from the obelisk when it decided to do the teleing and had to try again while under attack. Arriving in level 44 Wilderness this time, I had to eat 4 Sharks and drink some more Antipoison to cure myself, so was low on stocks to begin with.   I ran over, went down the ladder, switched to the Barrows gloves and tried to tele. Eeks, I'd been teleblocked! Thankfully, I'd got the Forinthry Bracelet with me, so switching back to that allowed me into the KBD's lair. This trip went better, with four whole kills before I was out of PPots and Sharks. It was going so well that I was brave enough to take a screenshot without fear of dying! :D     A drop of 100 Yew Logs along with a couple of other smaller drops also meant that I don't think I was in the red for this run.   Third trip, I arrived fine, but then attacking there was 0 after 0 after 0. On the first kill, the Special Attack bar was back up to 90% by the time the KDB died and on the second it had reached 100% despite five DDS specs having been cast with it. It really didn't feel like things were going well, but I had a few Sharks and a couple of doses of PPot left, so decided to have a shot at a third kill.   This went... strangely. First, I wasn't watching my Prayer, so managed to let it drop to 0. I then noticed I was going to run out of Prayer Points before the KBD was dead, so turned off Piety to conserve a few points. Eventually, it died, the three kills requiring 12 doses of PPot and 28 Sharks but...     My first Dragon Drop! :yay:   I picked it up, teled out and can say that I'll probably be back there at some point, although clearly have room to improve - DHide Chaps instead of DSkirt and Holy Wrench to use less PPoints seem like obvious places to start, but if anybody has any other suggestions to get more kills in (80 Atk / Strength, 92 Def), I'd love to hear them. :D
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Sal's Realm Christmas Party 2009 - The Pictures

As mentioned in the last entry, here's a summary of what all of the pictures show. :D   The pics (60mb, .zip): http://skins.santafish.org/Christmas%20Party%202009.zip   1 - I was watching the Take That thing on ITV before the event, so during the ad breaks I decided to pop in-game and say hi.   2 / 3 - On the third time I appeared, people had made a train and were wandering around Mudskipper Point.   4 - And the next time, people were emoting together, as can be seen in the left of the image.   5 / 6 - By ten-to, it was getting pretty busy.   7 - On the hour, everybody was following Doom, who dragged people north a bit and several of us got left behind at the willows when he headed back south.   8 - Heading back south, the bunch of people jumped onto my back and the lag of people on my tail meant I had to drop the graphics settings, as can be seen by the low-def water.   9 - The first field we attacked was a small one, so was fairly easy to take everything from.   10 - The next was slightly larger, with things spread out, but once again was fairly easy to pick everything.   11 - Who'd have known that the field was full of Cabbages a matter of seconds earlier? :D   12 - The Draynor Grain field is HUGE and the grain spawns crazily fast, so there weren't enough of us to empty it. :(   13 - ...so we headed on to the next, smaller, Grain field.   14 - ...which we had a go at taking crops from.   15 - I heard from Josh that we'd lost a group of people, so he suggested homeporting. I'd forgotten that when huge numbers of people do it at once, the animation doesn't show properly, but it's still good fun. :D   16 - ...and I'm sure the people who were hanging out in Lmbridge got quite a shock when so many people suddenyl arrived.   17 - Heading north towards Varrock, it was evident that there wa going to be anther Potato famine as the field was emptied with crazy speed.   18 / 19 / 20 - Having run through Varrock, we were low on energy, so sat down and rested at the musician for a minute.   21 - ...before charging onwards through Barbarian Village towards Falador.   22 - ...and arriving at the Party Room. With this one, I hadn't noticed that I'd pressed Print Screen, so wondered why my scren was frozen until I right-clicked, saw the capture menu and went 'ohhhhhhhhh'. :D   23 - The goods that we picked went into the chest, totally filling it up.   24 - The Party Room was pretty full when we arrived (why are there only 2 F2P party rooms? :lol:).   25 - Since the chest was full, people were dropping their fresh produce around the room, making even more madness.   26 / 27 / 28 - So many people were that that those further away simply weren't showing. Reminds me of Fally World 2 back in the day.   29 - I loved the comment, so simply had to capture it.   30 - After ~10 mins at the Party Room, we headed off towards Clan Wars.   31 - ...stopping off at Edgeville to pick up some armour and weapons rather than the pretteh outfits that many were wearing.   32 - ...then dashed off in a north-easterly direction.   33 - When we reached level 16 wilderness, I thought we were too deep, so had to open up the World Map to check that we were heading in the right direction. It turns out that we were and if I'd simply rotated my camera 180 degrees, I would have seen Clan Wars. :D   34 / 35 - As always, it was total pain finding any of the Generals on the other team to challenge, so there were a couple of minutes before I found Candi and the first game could begin.   36 / 37 - A couple of nice overview shots of the battle with people dying.   38 - Candi died having called a pile on me. ^_^   39 - Then Santa did too.   40 - But sadly I wasn't invincible. :(   41 - The final scores of the first game, with somebody dying at my feet.   42 - Although it says that I lost, my CC won, so technically I was a winner too - I could lose! :D   43 - OMG it's Sal!!!!@@@!@!@!11@!@!1shift!!@!one!!@111@!@!   44 - We started another game in a different battleground.   45 - Sadly clicking did nothing. :( :P   46 - Lots of people killing each other.   47 / 49 - People emoting and having fun once they'd died.   48 - I died and looking at it now, the attack of the person to the left of me looks pretty epic.   50 - More fighting.   51 - The third battle was in the battleground with turrets.   52 - More fighting.   53 - If anybody wants a specific person to shout at for deciding that an 8 hour battle with no killcount limit would be a good idea, Josh is the person you want. Before the start of the battle, I was totally unable to see ANY of the generals from either team, so it seems like he got there first and started the battle with Sal or something. :D   54 - There was some cheering going on.   55 - ...and people running in fear from me. :lol: The battle was also extremely even, as can be seen from the 140-141 killcounts.   56 - Eventually, 10 pm arrived, so quite a few people left the battle so we could head over to Yanille World 77 for some partying at Merch Gwyar's house.   57 - Menageries are beautiful. :D   58 - Word came out that people had congregated at the Combat Ring upstairs, so off I ran to find that somebody was going to be getting 100 combat.   59 - ...but before that could happen, another rumour appeared that Sal was downstairs, so off everybody ran.   60 - ...before heading back upstairs for the level to be reached.   61 / 62 - The combat ring was then the home of more killing.   63 - I ventured off to have a look around the house, so this is a pic of some of the dungeon creatures.   64 - Heading back upstairs, there was dancing going on, with somebody firing an arrow up into Merch's roof and sleepy taking the role of dancing caged bear.   65 - More dancing.   66 - Somebody (Mr Hardrune?) was having a staring contest with Sal and in the end managed to win!   67 - KBD heads are special, so it would be wrong not to take a screenie of them.   68 - Heading to Teacuptime's house, his Menagerie and garden next to it is equally beautiful. :D   69 - More exploring found that his house is amazingly designed and, like Merch's, makes mine feel like a mess that has been put together as more rooms became available rather than something that's been designed in any way (which is fairly accurate).   70 - My first trip into the dungeon and attempt to kill the Steel Dragon with no antifire shield didn't end up too well. :P   71 - There are lots of scary creatures in the dungeon.   72 - On the next attempt to kill the Steel Dragon, there was help in the form of somebody with a Dragon Hally, so together we managed to pwn it with little health loss.   73 - Another pic of the dragon.   74 - This attempt, we managed to get the Dragon down to about half health before both of us were dead. :(   75 - ...but coming back, there were more people down there and together we managed to slay it (I love the position of the dragon in this pic :D).   76 - The Tok-xil is an impressive looking creature and a screenshot doesn't show of it's awesomeness as well as it should do.   77 - There was a troll with a slightly faster spawn time than the rest of the creatures in the dungeon, so b0b2oo0, myself and a couple of others made sure that it died as quickly as possible each time it appeared. ^_^   78 - Eventually I died and when I re-entered the house, I saw a group of people in the Chapel, so headed over.   79 - Dr Leviathan traded me and gave me a hat, which I put on. It was only at that point that I noticed everybody else was also wearing one.   80 / 81 - It was coming up to midnight, so we headed down to the Steel Dragon for a couple of final kills before it was time to leave.   82 - Afterwards, Jordans W71 was getting 99 Woodcutting, so we Gloried to Edgeville before heading to Ice Mountain to woot and grats at his achievement.   We then headed down to the Woodcutting Cape guy where the skillcape was bought and the emote performed several times. People then disappeared, leaving behind me and somebody else (sorry, totally forgot the name :D), so we danced for a few minutes before I was dragged off north when I wasn't looking, at which point I teled to Edgeville where I found Merch and we did some more dancing before logging off for the night.   -   As I said in the last entry, a huge ty to Merch Gwyar and Teacuptime for opening their houses and also to everybody who turned up and made the event so much fun.
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Sal's Realm Christmas Party 2009

I know I'm not alone in feeling that it was great fun, so thanks to all who came and made it so amazing. :P   I'd like to give a special tyvm to several people - Merch Gwyar and Teacuptime for allowing the Sal's rabble to invade their houses and Joshua Mack for deciding that starting an 8 hour clan war with no killcount limit would be a good idea...   As usual, I took a lot of screenshots, although this time I didn't get any video since the additional lag would have killed me. Rather than uploading 80 separate images (and then not showing up as happened last time), I've zipped them up and uploaded them to santafish for easy access for anybody who wants to see them...   http://skins.santafish.org/Christmas%20Party%202009.zip (I hope Sal doesn't mind :P)   I'll make another entry with a more detailed rundown of what each image shows in the morning. :)
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It Really Doesn't Screan Of Polish

It's been a few days since the launch of the new-look Jagex store, so it's probably time to comment on it. Hopefully what I've written makes some sense, although huge differences between the EU and US stores probably make it slightly harder to follow than it could be as I jump between the two.   Slightly over a month ago revealed the new-look jagex.com which I mentioned was pretty darn good. A day later and I noticed annoying problems with the Adventurer's Log. Unfortunately, the creator of the latter appears to have had their hands on the Jagex Store. :P   To start with you load the site and get a choose country page in your face which is riddled with painfully bad design.   First, there are three rows on the page, each of a different width which makes the page look unfinished and generally icky.
 
Secondly, clicking on the 'Remember this location' text doesn't change the status of the textbox, a simple thing that makes it feel much more usable. I know somebody at Jagex knows how to do this - it happens on login pages for the Runescape website.
 
Next are those big buttons that link to the EU / US stores. When you hover over them, everything is done using JavaScript rather than CSS which means it's sloooooooooooooooooooow. -.- Heading there now, it took a second and a half for the background to turn orange when I moused over the button (it should be instant by changing the background-position on an image) - ask the person who designed the buttons in the Knowledge Base for help with this.
 
The second problem with the buttons is the country list that appears - once again, it's slow to appear and always appears at a slightly different time to the orange background. This could probably be solved in a similar way to the navigation on the Runescape website, so ask the person who did that to help there or head to here as referenced in the Runescape global stylesheet.
 
Ontop of this, when you mouse over anything that you're supposed to click (checkbox / those big buttons), the cursor stays as an arrow rather than changing to a pointer. It's a usability nightmare and whoever allowed it past needs shooting.
To add to this problem, there's a link in the top-left corner of the page which DOES change the cursor, but clicking on it simply sends you to the page you're on. -.-
#theThingYouWantPeopleToClickOn { cursor:pointer; } There, was it really that hard?
 
Lastly, why is the page even there? When I head to google.com, it redirects to google.co.uk and if I head to amazon.com, there's a nice big thing at the top saying 'ooo, you seem to be in the UK, why not check out amazon.co.uk instead?'. So, detect where somebody's shopping from and send them to that store automatically rather than sticking a hindrance in the way. Ask the creator of the Account Creation page for help with this.
OK, I've worked out that I'm supposed to click on the thing that becomes orange and am now in the store itself. The Login button is ugly. I know you want it to stand out so people click on it, but really it's ugly and doesn't fit in with the rest of the design at all. It's missing any kind of border, the gradient doesn't match the background of the rest of the border at all and when you mouseover it, the colour of the text becomes icky and hard to read (may simply be me).
 
There's a login button, but no 'Register' button. In the FAQ, the first question tells you what to do, but since there's no clear word 'Register' in any of the questions, it seems like an obvious one to miss and makes your life as a user that bit harder.
Also in the FAQ, the link in the 'International Orders' question doesn't send you to the Country Select page, simply to the EU homepage, meaning there's no easy way to switch stores without manually deleting cookies (something you really shouldn't expect a user to know how to do).
On the Registration page itself, for some reason the texboxes are different lengths and it's unable to pre-select a country that I'm located in (as is managed on the Runescape account creation page).
 
The title text of the link in the top-left corner doesn't have 'Go to' at the start of it like EVERY OTHER link towards the top of the page. Consistency is good and small differences like that aren't a massive problem, but it's a small niggle that it'd be nice to have 'fixed'.
 
There was a post on the RSOF I saw saying that the area you can click on for links in the top navigation bar is too small and not clear enough, though I'd disagree in part. It's good that you can click slightly to the side of links, however it'd be nice to have the ability to click on the full height of the navigation bar - larger areas = easier to click = faster navigation = happier users.
 
[EU] What is up with the footer? The text is totally unreadable against the background and half the stuff is repeated. Why aren't the T&C / Privacy Policy links in-line with the text, instead being above on a separate row? Having deciphered what it says, I don't want to have to hunt around to find links to the things - they may be just above, but it took me several seconds to spot, read, work out the meaning of, move the mouse to and click on them.
This is one of the few things that looks better in the US store.
 
The 'Browse the Store' box looks empty and although it's nice that it means the bottom of elements line up on the homepage, they don't anywhere else and it looks silly instead.
 
There's a nice picture of a featured product and I can see that it's a shirt of some kind, however the title text simply says 'Featured Product' rather than naming it, meaning I've got to click and spend 5 seconds of my life to find out what it is specifically.
Now I've looked around the homepage, onto other pages. First the item search pages... [EU] It's nice having bolded text on the currently selected section - Accessories, Apparel or Books.
 
[EU] At the same time, the background isn't quite as helpful - the selected one is exactly the same as you get when hovering. This means that hovering over a selected link, the background doesn't change colour, making it harder to see that your mouse is in the right place, slowing navigation.
 
[EU] As for the search results themselves, on the Country Select page I complained about a lack of different cursors, here I'd say there's too much (at least with things as they are). :D You're able to click on the gap between item images to head to it's page - great, bigger areas = good! :P Unfortunately, there's a 1px gap between the two columns, meaning it's almost impossible to see that the mouse has moved onto the other image. To fix this, make the background colour change slightly when hovering over it to show which item you're about to click on.
 
As for the Search Page itself, (in the EU store) you can click on labels and the textboxes themselves will obtain focus. What was the person making the Country Select page on to make it so bad and why doesn't this happen in the US store?
 
The 'Search' button itself also has no pretteh background in the EU store, while in the US store it's a stupidy tiny 'Continue' button that takes an age to find.
 
...all of the above appear totally different in the EU and US stores. If they're doing pretty much the same thing, why do they look so different? It looks like it'll be a pain to maintain without more consistency.
 
The text in the US store is generally too small, the 'Wishlist' link from the top bar is missing,
  Then the item pages themselves. When viewing an item, there's a code that comes up next to the item name along the lines of 'JGX141' for Betrayal at Falador. As a user, I don't care what it is ad if I'm filing a complaint about an item, I'm going to give the name rather than a code that means nothing to me. Fine, use if on the back-end for working things out, but don't tell me what it is because I don't care and it takes time for it to load.
 
Like on the Country Select page, background images for buttons are saved as different images, to take time to appear, during which a blank gap shows on the page. This may work wonderfully with Runescape where everything is in one magical cache that rarely gets deleted, but when looking at a website like this where somebody isn't going to be visint every day, it doesn't work. Things get overwritten too quickly, meaning it's the same problem every time you fix it and it simply becomes annoying. Change it and change every similar implementation on other websites to stop being annoying.
 
In the US store, there's a 'Zoom' icon which you can click on to see a larger image of the item. Why can't you click on the image itself (as with the EU store)? The lightboxes being used are also different.
Why the EU and US stores look so different, I have no idea. It seems like two groups of people were sent off to make designs, then they were combined in about a day, sharing the worst parts between each other and meaning that neither feels properly designed.   The Country Select page is diabolical to use as it is, although 10 minutes of work would fix most of it.   Although I really don't like white backgrounds for websites (as the Jagex Store was before), I'm not really sure this is an improvement in much other than reduced shipping costs to the US since it's clearly been put out in a rush before Christmas.   But I guess the key part is: If I was a parent of a kid going 'mummy, daddy, plz can I have something from the Jagex Store plz plz plz', would I buy it for them? If using a non-FF browser and they'd not ticked the 'Remember' box on the country select page, No. It simply doesn't feel polished enough to trust hem with my information despite the 'https' in the address bar. If using FF, it says that it's been verified by somebody and the favicon has a blue background, so I'd be more trusting, but the fact still stands that it isn't friendly to use.   If they had Remembered the status so I didn't have to pass that nightmare of a Country Select page, possibly. I would, however, be significantly more likely to say 'yes' if it told me up-front what the P&P for items was. The country can generally be detected from various factors, so use that to work out where I am and how much it'll cost to deliver to me rather than making me sign up before going "that's how much? O_o".   OK, it's nice to know that those in the US are paying less for shipping, but as a site itself there's still quite a bit of work to be done with design and usability. Clearly something rushed out quickly before Christmas. :P
Neo Avatars

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5
 

Annoying Quest Title

Similar to the Predestination topic last month, whenever I see the title of today's Quest I'm wondering why somebody's posted a thread about getting a Blood Rune Drop. :P
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0
 

Finally Got Round To Updating It

It's been a while, but I've finally got round to updating the Blue Runescape Website Skin so that it works again following the changes in URL a while back.   It's taken this long to update it because I've had no personal incentive to do so - I've switched to using Chrome since it has a significantly faster statup time (measured in seconds rather than minutes) compared with Firefox. Up until now, it's had no easy way to install Userstyles, so I've simply not bothered. Today, however, I decided to download the BETA version of Chrome which has the ability to install extensions, which also means easy installation of Userstyles! :/   There's a slight pause between loading the page and it turning blue on Chrome (none on Firefox with Stylish installed), but that's not a real problem when it looks so much nicer. :D   I've also made the RuneScape Forums - Wide style work again, so the forums will fill up more screen space rather than hiding in the middle.   As something small, I've also made a separate style to Define the Avatar Size on the RuneScape Forums. If you have the Runescape Website - Blue skin installed, you'll have it anyway, but what it does is set dimensions for the avatars on the RuneScape forum even before they have loaded (as Jagex should do anyway). This makes scrolling through multiple pages of forum threads significantly less annoying since the 'Next' button doesn't keep running away as more avatars load. <_<   So, if you wanted it working again or simply want the RuneScape website to be nice and blue, be sure to check it out (and tell me about any problems you see outside the Adventurer's Log - I'll do my best to fix that asap).   http://userstyles.org/styles/16009 http://userstyles.org/styles/18358
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3
 

Films

I've found myself watching quite a few films over the past week that I've not seen before, so...   [name=high-school-musical][/name]First was High School Musical. I'd heard so many terrible things about it, but had just sat through an hour and a half of the X Factor, so it couldn't have been any worse than that. Turns out that it's a fantastic film. The entire plot and all the twists are predictable within 10 minutes, the whole thing is horribly cheesy and the songs are waaaaaaay too catchy, but together it's simply fantastic.   Some of the posts in this thread clearly totally miss the point of it... http://runescape.salmoneus.net/forums/inde...t&p=2807545 To answer why I hate HSM: It has to be the corniest thing I've seen in my lifetime of sixteen years. HSM is more fake than a pair of DD breasts on a Hollywood actress. If those kids started singing like that in a regular HS, there would most likely be a group of people to throw things at them, or they'd get ridiculed and become extremely unpopular.Sorry, but that's the entire point and if you see "omg my friends would kill me if they knew I sang, *insert him and is friends in song and dance*" and still try to take it at all seriously, I feel sad for you. The word "musical" is in the name, so of course there's going to be singing. It's not the best musical in the world - Blood Brothers and Lion King fight for that role, but for what it is, absolutely amazing.   Next came The Simpson's Movie. A wonderfully made film with lots of great references (that I understood ), the 'Inconvenient Truth' part topping everything else. It feels along the lines of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, while being totally different. Not the greatest plot in the world and the Spider Pig part is certainly less special than I was expecting based on it being picked up on so much when it was released, but thoroughly entertaining nonetheless.   Third was Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert. I'm not quite sure why it had been recorded when it was on TV a few weeks back, but it was so I decided to watch it. The picture and sound was totally messed up (loose wire somewhere), but it was still watchable and the songs are catchy, so all was good. :D   The next, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, was certainly the worst of them all. I've not seen the first two which probably didn't help, but the plot was abysmal. It starts with 20 minutes of nothing, a long chase appears out of nowhere with some totally stupid parts (woo, lets drive under a lorry to get something off the roof!...), then the rest of the film goes nowhere. There are some nice explosions and it would probably make more sense having seen the first two, but I haven't and the film was terrible and certainly not worth the $200m it cost to make.   I thought I hadn't seen it before, so I watched Spiderman 2. Turns out I had, but it was still entertaining, albeit slightly slow and lacking in anything to make you go 'yeah, that was really good' (like Harry Potter 6).   Then came The Dark Knight. Totally amazing film. ^_^ There are some slight sound level problems towards the start with needing to make it loud to hear a conversation, then having your ears blasted for 5 minutes while some action happens, then going back to the quiet level again, but other than that it's fantastic. The plot makes sense and is paced wonderfully, the acting is great, the action is plausible and there's the right amount of it. The music is also yet another masterpiece by Hans Zimmer (and that other guy listed in the wiki article). Love it.   Penultimately was the last 20 minutes of Forrest Gump. I've seen the first two hours multiple times, but have never seen those last 20 minutes for various reasons - power cuts, it being taped over, recording all the the rest of the film but cutting off at the end, not recording the last part when going to bed or something. You name a way that last bit could have been missed, it's probably happened... Anyway, it had actually recorded, so I sat down and watched it... amazing ending to a great film however sad it may make you feel. ='(   Finally would have been V for Vendetta, but I couldn't find it recorded, so instead watched High School Musical again. Absolutely amazing film with lots of small things in the back of shots that you miss the first time, the songs being even more amazing having spent a week listening to them on Spotify () and will certainly receive more views in the future.
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6
 

Predestination

Whenever I see that topic title, I wonder why people are debating the removal of vehicles from a street or city centre (pedestrianisation). >.<
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8
 

It Screams Of Polish

Today reveals a new look for http://www.jagex.com/ and it keeps up the recent trend of well polished webpage design and implementation. It's only a couple of pages with the new look, but almost everything has been looked at and even the 'strange' decisions have a perfectly acceptable reason behind them if you put in a moment of thought.   Starting with the navigation (and pretty much every link on the page) - when you hover over anything, the colour of the background (and text) changes instantly, no waiting for the image to load because it's saved in a different file. I know this is widespread nowadays, but there are certain websites that I use such as the MGE that don't and when it works you forget how fantastic an idea it is.   The other thing with the navigation is that you don't need to be hovering over the text to click a link - your mouse can be in the gap next to it and you'll still be whisked off to somewhere else upon clicking. It's something that Amazon totally fails to do, but Jagex does. Another instance where Jagex beats Amazon is giving focus to the box you want - you'd expect focus on the Amazon homepage to be in the search box, but no, you have to click before typing. On the login page for the RuneScape website, "If the username field is empty, it gets focus. If the password field is empty but username is filled, it gets focus." - no need to click before entering your details.   With the news feeds, at first I felt that the 'Read more...' links had too little contrast with the background, making them hard to read, however I can see a clear reason for it being like that. On the RuneScape / FunOrb websites, the links are made to stand out so you're more inclined click the link and read the full article rather than complaining that 'Jagex didn't tell me that they'd done x y z'. On the Jagex site, they don't want you to click the links - you're there for an overview of their products and anyway, LOOK THERE ARE PRETTY PICTURES TO THE LEFT which you want to click instead. It's the one specific thing about the site design that makes me go 'wow'. ^_^   This is the first Jagex site that has been designed for a 1024x768 resolution rather than 800x600. IIRC, it was a year and a bit ago that it was mentioned that this change would occur, so I wonder how long it'll be until other Jagex sites are given this treatment.   As for negatives, there's only one - the tabs on the T&C pages require you to load the next page rather than using JS to switch between them (like the news feeds on the homepage). I understand that it'd me slightly more complex, but if you're using tabs in a website design, don't make me load a whole new page to view what's behind it. Tabs in software generally indicate something that's already open - in Paint.NET (and newer versions of Photoshop) tabs indicate an image that's open, in a web browser tabs indicate a page that has loaded, in Excel tabs indicate a worksheet that you can switch to without anything loading. Why doesn't the same rule apply for webpages?   A fantastic job well done by the unidentified* beings who created Jagex's new homepage. ^_^   *there are no comments (that I've noticed) in the source code to identify who made it as there are on the corporate site
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10
 

Please Ensure Content Is Broken Before Release - Halloween Event

I finally got round to hopping in-game and doing the Halloween event. It filled half an hour in an entertaining way, so that's good.   I didn't fail any of the obstacles which probably helped (the upper level ones are hawt ), but there were a couple of problems...   When clicking to move in the Herald's room (to the other side), there's a large lag before you actually start to move - as if it's having a problem finding a path around that giant spider. If you can run half way round a floor of a house to some stairs without lag, why does having a single spider in the way cause problems?   Secondly, Muncher. I was trying to complete that as if it was made poorly (broken) - having to re-talk to him each time you choose an option. This meant that even when Entertaining him, then showing Eek, it failed to work until I bothered clicking on 'Click here to continue'. Seriously, I'm so used to the text closing part-way through a conversation when choosing the options that I naturally choose to talk to the NPC again rather than 'Clicking here to continue'.   Dear Jagex, Please make sure the game works both properly and as if it was broken when releasing new content (or fix everything to make it consistently good, brainwashing those that are used to the bad version so they forget how it worked). Tyvm Neo   ...and when he decides to 'kill' you, teleporting you to the entrance, why does Eek have to tell you that you have x cobwebs left to spin in that room? I DON'T CARE - I want to be in the room over THERE! *points* >.<   As for the rewards, who cares if the cape's ugly (having solely a web rather than the background too would be hawt) and you're given a spider that tries to be a yo-yo? IT'S A HOLIDAY EVENT! - something to fill an ~hour (which it does), be fun (which it is) and give a random piece of clothing to add to your costume collection (which it does).   I also recall that the transition into the dark of Rimmington last year was significantly smoother than the two sudden jumps that appear around the portal this time. Oh well, as I said, it's something fun to fill an ~hour, so thank-you Mod John A and those who helped him create it. :D
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5
 

One Of Those Small Things...

I know I'm probably asking too much, but is it really too hard to tell that I'm NOT using IE? :D     (the answer's no and, yes, things like this do bug me)
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7
 

Please Say That I'm Stupid And Missing Something Totally Obvious...

For the past few Runescape updates, I've been logging into the game to check it out for a minute or two. Each time, I've found 2-6 bugs of various levels of importance and irritation, which I'll accept so long as they're fixed in a reasonable amount of time - small things are bound to slip through.   Today was the Display Names update, so I checked out what it's like in-game, find a couple of problems, report them and log out as usual. I then decide to look at the Account Creation page, with the following quote from the Dev Blog in mind...   "It’d even make accounts more secure, as a potential hijacker would have to work out your username as well as your password."   Is it only me that sees a giant fail when you combine that quote, the Account Creation page, a 28 day limit between name changes the tooltips in the Friends List? <_<
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Neo Avatars

2
 

Rct3 And Epic Music

I've spent a few days having great fun on RCT3 and in doing so have managed to reach 100% in Career mode. :D   Although most of the way went smoothly, there were a couple of parks with certain objectives that were driving me mad...   The first involved a need to earn a large amount of money to pay back a loan. Annoyingly, the amount I needed to pay back was about 80 times monthly profit. I was patient enough (on 'super fast forward' mode) to get through about half of this time, but eventually got fed up and decided to destroy a tree... I made some money in doing so! ^_^ It turns out that all this time I'd been waiting, there'd been enough trees pre-planted in the park for me to destroy just half of them and earn enough money to pay back the loan... :D   The landscape of this park also wasn't helpful, so the entire park I'd built was all cramped together, with rides above rides above rides and paths that made placing a Janitor a difficult task. Note the roller coaster in the middle which has rides and paths above it for the whole time it's on the ground. :P     The other notable moment was more the opposite - I had waaaaaaay too much money and was simply waiting for a VIP to arrive, go on some rides, leave and say 'Grats, you win'. To use up some of this money and fill some time, I decided to create several hotspots of light next to a few of the rides which'd give a different feel when going past at night.     Compared with the darkness going round most of the ride, the lights are stupidly bright and look hawt. :D     With one of the hotspots, I decided to create a 'tunnel' so the roller coaster whizzes round a corner down a hill and through a tight space that's lit with too many lamps. There's no 'proper' way to make a tunnel, so it was created by raising the land and putting some paths over the top to cover it.     Whooooooooooooooooooosssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! :D   -   [name=dragon-rider][/name]As for the epic music, the soundtrack to is fantastic at accompanying the visuals (and in it's own right). Particularly amazing is in , the track (Dragon Rider ~ Two Steps From Hell) starting at ~7:20, with ~ indicating the start of the 'omg epic wow' part.   *Neo Avatars can't wait for part 3
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3
 

How'd I Not Noticed...

...that clicking on the 'Message Title' / 'Sender' / 'Date' headings in your inbox will sort the messages by that column (A-Z, A-Z, New-Old)? :D
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4
 

Big Numbers

I can generally get my head round big numbers reasonably well, but some of those in this article sound... crazy. 7650 quests
70,000 spells
75,000 CPU cores
180,000 squashed bugs
1.5 million art assets
5.5 million lines of code
112.5 terabytes of RAM
1.3 petabyes of storage
4.7 petabytes of data transfer for a patch (3.1)
:D
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6
 

Flag In The Ground

I found it when going through my Spotify playlist and adding new songs that had been added / released since I'd last gone through, finding another ~300 songs including this one...     It's a strange song, ending up as a cross between Victoria's Secret (amazing song that I totally love) and Fly with the Black Swan (a song that I totally hate, but will listen to over and over again). There's a nice progression throughout the four minutes, with the first 15 seconds and last bit feeling quite unlike Unia and those sections that are similar having a slightly better sound to them.   Not the greatest song in the world, but nice none-the-less and getting better with each listen. :glasses:
Neo Avatars

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2
 

Amazon Fail

http://www.amazon.co.uk/THQ-Wall-E-PS2/dp/B0017THWW2/   Product: Wall.E (PS2)   Description: Zip, race and blast as you take Wall-E and/or Eve through a fast-paced adventure in the newest Disney/Pixar blockbuster movie, Walle. Explore 10 worlds filled with non-stop action and adventure, carry out intense missions, dodge dangerous enemies, solve puzzles and navigate your way through a futuristic world. Relive key action-packed moments from the movie
Enjoy new storylines and explore massive environments not seen in the film
Play as Wall-E and Eve, as you interact with all the key characters from the story
Over 10 action packed levels
Unique gameplay experience tailored specifically for the Wii
Use the Wii Remote pointer/gesture to aim and throw cubes with Wall-E and use the pointer to fly/shoot with Eve
3 unique, head-to-head multiplayer mini-games each with 3 variations
Multiplayer challenges and tons of minig-ames/activities
Features major movie voice talent
...who proofread that? ;)     On a slightly related note, why do items show in your 'Suggested Items' list that you've already bought in the past? :)
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5
 

Greater Compatibility

Following a blog post a few weeks back, website styles on http://userstyles.org/ can now easily be used by those other than Stylish users. :D   This means that if you use any of the following, you can use the hawt below linked styles... Stylish, Greasemonkey, Chrome [info], Opera [info], IE7Pro :D   The hawt below linked styles   Runescape Website - Blue - make the Runescape website all nice and blue, based on the Runescape Blue skin on these forums Runescape Forums - Wide - make the Runescape forums fill the width of your screen rather than being all squashed in the middle of it, with all that wasted space at the side Sal's Realm of Runescape - Wide - like the above for the Runescape Forums, but makes the main Sal's Realm site fully fit the width of your browser rather than having to 'suffer' the design that has been optimised for 800x600 Lots of other things - have a browse and I'm sure there'll be something else that looks hawt to you :D     For pics... http://runescape.salmoneus.net/forums/blog...=1914&st=20 - Head from the oldest entries to the newest ones to see what various things look like. Some pics have sections that are slightly out-of-date (the RS homepage looks much nicer now as one example, more brown borders have been removed is another), but it should give a good overall idea. :D
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6
 

New Quote

I has a hawt new quote in my sig thanks to some misc web browsing. :D   "#clowns {float:left;} #jokers {float:right;} #me, #you {position:static;text-align:center;margin:auto;}" ~ whoojemaflip
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