March- Mad Marchness

A New Slave DM!

We have a new DM on a string. Yup, you heard that right, Guitarguy was promoted to DM! We warmly welcome him, and hope that he gets accustomed to his new duties, including but not limited to:

• Taking up the spot that was left open by Tabt, that is, the kitchen. 
• Finding clever synonyms for us to use to make us look more intelligent than we actually are.
• Thinking of good puns for us to use in Breaking News topics. 
• Busywork :eyebrows:

Guitarguy was a great pick! If you've not done so before, you should also check out his screenshot fake choose your own adventure, unless you're allergic to wordplay. Tune in for further updates.

An Interview With a Jagex Mod

This month we had a discussion with Mod Infinity, our fansite support contact at Jagex. We asked him a few questions.

How did you become a Community Engagement Specialist at Jagex?

I applied for the position to work for Jagex late last year due to my previous experience. I think what Jagex look for when it comes to recruiting new people to the Community Management team is previous experience and a real passion for games and community spirit.

What do you do in a typical work day?

Typical day at work? Is there such a thing?! :P Each day varies depending on what priorities we have and what update we’re releasing, but I guess there are some things I do on a daily basis without fail, which are:

1. Check & reply to e-mails, both personal Jagex messages and those sent to [email protected] & [email protected]
2. Review the ‘Moderator Review Thread’ on the forums, pop into the specialist fansite staff area and check up on our lovely Player & Forum moderators
3. Catch up with the rest of the CM team!
4. Grab a bowl of cereal with Mod Balance… can’t miss our daily breakfast club now!
5. Run a handful of players through Player Moderator recruitment checks

One day we could be responding to a new RuneScape hashtag on Twitter, engaging on Reddit, hanging out with players in game, writing up a newspost, thinking of the next big event, working with our fansites, organising player powered competitions, planning some of our more global events, such as GameBlast and a load of other things too. It’s a fun job with lots of challenge!

RuneZone recently released a snippet highlighting the impressive relationship they have with Jagex. Do you have any advice for fansites interested in bolstering ties with Jagex?

We support all of our fansites as much as possible, especially those on the platinum and gold tiers of support, so that means you awesome people at Sal’s Realm too (waves)!! I encourage any up and coming fansites to e-mail [email protected] to let me know what their plans, aims and goals are, and I’ll look into how we can support them achieve their goals. The fansites we’re already in touch with simply need to ask for support! When an established or supported fansite reaches out for support or cool stuff (like you guys did with this interview) then we’re more than happy to get on board and help where we can. We’d also advise fansites to follow the CM team on Twitter (full list on our Wiki|) as we’re always happy to re-tweet any in game events fansites may have!

We're looking forward to the future interviews we have planned with Jagex.

All Quiet on the Site Font

Way back in December, O hai im KAMIL posted a topic discussing the current site font. Kamil is suggesting we change it. The topic generated some good discussion, however it has fizzled out. Check out the topic to regenerate discussion!

RuneScape sucks, apparently

This month saw the rise of our newest hot topic: "Why RuneScape Sucks". NoSouls joined the forums to express his opinions, introducing the topic with a twelve-minute Youtube video and a summary of his objections. A handful of complaints seemed to be at the center of the debate, and made evident NoSouls' adamance in this discussion. In particular, he argued that Java is an obsolete programming language on which to build a game, and that Jagex is nothing more than crippling, ruining, disappointing, and all other kinds of present participles. Having dropped the topic into hostile territory, it was inevitable that things would soon get messy. Contrasting views were ubiquitous, as were offtopic posts, as were even more offtopic posts protesting the offtopic posts. As lilshu so succinctly put it when closing the topic on its eleventh page, "Seems like everyone is more interested in talking about each other than RuneScape."

But if you were planning to dive into the discourse, worry not. NoSouls has continued to communicate his beliefs with the followup "Why Jagex Sucks". In it, he seeks to restrict posting to only that which demonstrates why Jagex does, supposedly, suck. Some believe that posting a topic for the sake of having others express their assent is of no benefit to the forum. Whatever the case may be, let's hope that this topic doesn't share the same fate of his previous one.

Bonus XP Weekend Competition!

On February 21-23, Jagex decided to set up a bonus experience weekend. For 72 hours, all players' experience values would be doubled. Naturally, we set up a bonus experience weekend competition. Leaf pretty much left everybody else in the dust, making 24,168,363 experience. In second place came Wrong Chat with 13,582,887 experience and in third came Army of One, with 12,604,625 experience. A good time was had by all!

Fun Fact About March

In this edition, we thought we'd wrap up with an interesting fact about March. In March, every date is a complete, imperative sentence. For example, March first. As March is a verb as well as a month, it can be intrepreted as telling someone to march first. The subject is an absent you, "(You) march first." March fourth can also be interpreted as a sentence with two meanings. One can be "march fourth" and the other can be "march forth." However, this only works verbally as fourth/forth are spelled differently in writing.

Yeah, we know. You'll be thinking about that all day. You're welcome.

Contributors

Writers: Guitarguy, Reepicheep, Sobend, Lilshu
Other: Mod Infinity