November - Fire and Brimstone

Around the Forum

Reaction to Micael Fatia Getting his Driver's Licence

"Europe is doomed" – Bwauder
"More like the world as we know it..." – Nitua to Bwauder
"First the crisis and now this…" – Anonymous IRL friend of Micael
"Who?" - Jimmie Johnson, NASCAR champion
"All the complaints about how this was a mistake that will have serious consequences in the future are greatly exaggerated. He's by far the best driver I've had the pleasure of sitting next to, his diving test was simply perfect. Micael's driving skills are such high quality he puts Sébastien Loeb to shame. And no, I wasn’t drunk during the test nor am I high right now." – The clearly alcoholic and/or drug-addict driving instructor that passed Micael, probably.
"Lol srry guys we did our maths wrong, the world ends in 2014 XP" – The Mayan doomsday prophets

Superheroes

The topic "Favorite Superhero!" has appeared in the Polls & Surveys section. Sobend, its creator, has divided the poll choices into DC and Marvel, presumably to avoid any conflict that might otherwise arise.

Deadpool exhibits his recent boost in popularity, boasting a lead in terms of votes. Some members have taken advantage of the "Other" option to give credit to more obscure characters.

In other news, Aquaman exists.

RuneScape News

Halloween

In RuneScape 3, the Halloween event involved ghost destruction. The necromancer Melzar the Mad (fought during the Dragon Slayer quest) has come back with a vengeance, unleashing hoards of ghosts into Death's mansion. The only force capable of stopping these ghouls are the players, who use fancy devices to keep the ghosts at bay.

Also, RuneScape 3 saw the introduction of a spooky quest titled Broken Home. In it, the player investigates why a ghost is haunting an old house. The story is a stand-alone piece of content (it is not part of any arc or storyline) but it does have some tie ins to existing content. The quest has gotten good reviews from the players. It will stay in the game after Halloween.

In Old School RuneScape, the 2007 Halloween event was revisited. The event involves tidying up Death's house. Rewards for this include the Grim Reaper hood and the Zombie Hand emote.

Iron Man Mode

Over the past year, the Iron Man or DIY play style has been getting much attention. Now, this play style is officially in the game.

The iron man mode has certain restrictions on players, such as:

• No trading with other players (except for quests and bonds)
• Limited or no use of group minigames (Warbands, Soul Wars) and clan citadel XP plots
• You cannot pick up another player's drops (including wilderness kills)
• No use of Treasure Hunter (on RS3)

The mode has been introduced on both RS3 and Old School RuneScape. In RS3, there is also a hardcore iron man mode, where if players die they will be locked out of their account. The players do have the ability to buy up to two extra lives at 1000 total level and at 1600 total level. Old School RuneScape has an Ultimate Iron Man mode as well where players cannot use banks. This update has proven popular and many players have created Iron Man accounts (including a few players in the Sal's Community).

RuneFest

Runefest was also this month! The event, held in London, revealed several upcoming pieces of content such as Player Owned Ports Expansions, new quests, and a new World Event! You can vote on your favorite idea discussed on the main page.

Three members of the Sal's community went: Supersal69, Clue, and Bissous. They all loved it and brought back interesting stories, some of which you can read below in the RuneFest Recollections section!

ERBOLA

Fight back against the Ebola virus! Here are some preventative measures:

1. Stop being in a place that contains people infected with Ebola. Being in such a place will theoretically multiply your chances of getting Ebola by infinity percent, because the chances of being infected in another place add up to zero.
2. One of these safe zones is Canada. In fact, if you somehow do get Ebola in Canada anyway, you have (relatively) great healthcare to take care of it. It's a win-win. Did I mention the maple syrup?
3. This segment is not some propaganda intended to brainwash you into coming to the wonderful land of Canada.

This message is brought to you by Canada^TM

Opinion

Hear ye! Hear ye! Micael Fatia, member of the Echo of Silence (EoS) clan sounds off on the Jagex cup and Shooter585 criticizes the subscribe button on a freeplay servers.

The Worst Jagex Cup & the EoS Rant

With the Jagex cup coming to an end many active RuneScape clanners (like 3 people) are very interested in knowing which mighty clans demolished the competition and won the various prestigious cups this year. But for some reason the two most important RS3 cups seem to be stalled.

Why? This is most likely because Jagex had the brilliant idea of having 5vs5 finals streamed live at JagexHQ, Cambridge. Both the EoC and Legacy cups are meant to be full out war cups, they exist to put the full potential of a clan to the test, and all of the rounds were full out wars between the various participants. "Then why 5v5 finals?" any person with half a brain and common sense would ask. Well that is the million dollar question nobody knows the answer to. It completely ruins the point of the competitions if clan A is vastly inferior to clan B but wins the full out cup thanks a couple lucky randomly generated hits and one or two misclicks from the five members of the better clan, because that’s often how 5v5 wars are decided – they require little to no organization or skill. It’s largely a battle of luck.

Of course all of the decent clans opposed this horrible idea when they first heard of it, the great Echo of Silence being the most vocal about it. Echo of Silence admittedly isn’t the most mature clan around, but it has been a top 5 clan pretty much ever since it was created, being the top clan a couple times, and has helped to shape the history of RuneScape clanning. Despite all the beef in the clan world, this time it was pretty much unanimous that EoS was speaking for the whole RuneScape clanning community (except for the Jagex pet clans who side with Jagex on everything they do). A topic was created respectfully asking Jagex to reconsider their stance concerning the finals of the cup, and not only it was ignored, but it got deleted without any response from Jagex. EoS, being the number 1 Legacy clan, had a place in the final of the Legacy cup guaranteed ever since its beginning; EoS steamrolled every single clan in every round losing at max 1-2 people in one or two wars and in some managed to win with no losses. In the semi-finals EoS was going to face Wicked Fury, the RuneScape forums-based clan that won the previous Jagex cup during a year when no good clans existed on RS3 (pre-Legacy, all of the stellar, traditional clans had moved to OSRS). WF was no challenge to EoS and they knew this, so they attempted to sway the rules of the fight in a manner that would benefit them by asking for a "matched opts" rule and asking for all types of armour to be allowed (in medium/large sized fights Warpriest gear is the best gear available, and only maybe three members of EoS out of a memberlist of at least 70 owned it). EoS is not the sort of clan that allows itself to get bullied and of course told WF where they could shove their ridiculous rules. The war ended up being set with the default Jagex competition rules – full out war with all gear allowed.

Now at this point I believe it's important to mention that Wicked Fury is a Jagex pet clan, while EoS is the exact opposite, always getting into arguments with Jagex staff over everything and having an overall bad/immature attitude. WF, on the other hand, is in such good terms with Jagex that they talk and interact with the moderator responsible for the official clan related matters – Mod Matthe – on a regular basis and with an uncommon closeness.

And this is why it’s no surprise EoS found out they had been disqualified from the cup (EoS being by far the best clan in the cup, the win was already guaranteed) by Mod Matthe (the same mod who announced that the finals were going to be 5v5) the day before their fight vs. WF. The reason? 4-5 EoS members broke the RuneScape rules by allowing other clan members to use their accounts. EoS won every single fight with 30-40 people remaining and losing only one or two people but for some reason Mod Matthe decided that the two or so members breaking the RuneScape rules who attended said fights somehow influenced the end result so much that EoS just had to be disqualified, a ridiculous decision even clans rival to EoS thought was laughable. Rather than punish the very few members who broke the rules, Mod Matthe decided to punish the whole clan, so basically 98% of the clan who were oblivious to the factual rule breakings were paying for something 2% of the clan did. And what makes it even more hilarious is the fact that this is a rule every single RSC (the "real" clans) clan breaks on a more or less regular basis. Heck, every single one of the previous Jagex cup winners and runner-ups except maybe in the 2013 cup (the one with no decent clans) have broken this rule on a much larger scale than did EoS during the J Cups.

So what's the real reason for which EoS got disqualified? EoS is an annoying spike in Jagex's paw, a group of people who have no qualms in pointing out Jagex’s flaws and with the guts to stand up to them, not to mention they're/we're also a very immature clan. We are the exact opposite of WF who are in friendly terms with Jagex and suck up to them, so it’s no surprise they much preferred to have WF in the final than a clan they can't control, the same clan that flat out told Jagex if they made a 5v5 final in Cambridge they’d make Jagex pay for the plane tickets to England and then would would just sit there and refuse to fight in the final.

Mod Matthe ended up admitting via in-game chat with one of EoS leaders that the decision to DQ EoS wasn't the best, and that next year they'd do things differently. Still, rather than fix the issues made from the horrible decision, Mod Matthe decided to do nothing and allow WF to get to the final without beating EoS, and even more ridiculous than this is the fact that WF beat a grand total of 0 out of the 4 clans with good chances to win the cup to get to the final. EoS was DQed, Downfall and Clan Europe got beaten by New Power (NP being the other clan that got to the final). Now watch Jagex make up some random excuse to DQ New Power too (they broke the same rule as EoS) and award the cup to WF. It would be the most hilariously depressing gem from Jagex ever.

[Disclaimer - this submission is by no means representative of the entire Sal's Realm opinion on the way the Jagex cup is being run. It's merely the opinion of Capt Never Wrong Micael Fatia (ban me Jagex!!)]

The Subscribe Button

Jagex, please get rid of this button:

A sneak attack was launched on free-to-play players with the release of this button. This button, which is impossible to hide or make transparent, was released with the new interface system. The fact that Jagex thinks this button will somehow increase their revenue or get new players interested in the game is bewildering. It also does nothing to assure free-to-play players that they are playing the real game, not just a demo, and that members is only an expansion. So Jagex, please get rid of this button.

Help a Young Author

Meet Thaddeus Daniels, a young and aspiring author. Thaddeus has many problems, such as being four foot six. More recently, Thaddeus has come across a new problem. He has been struggling to pay his bills and desperately needs to finish a manuscript so he can get his finances together again. Unfortunately, Thaddeus has run into severe writer's block... he's only written two paragraphs. Below are the two paragraphs. Can we finish it so he can feed himself, or will Thaddeus have to rummage around other people's garbage in search of edible banana peels to survive?

As the morning shifted to the afternoon on the day of May nineteenth, the denizens of Pat’s old yet not quite antiquated establishment in New Drysdale began their usual jibe and livid discussion about the news of the world, the prospect about the Drysdale Blue Lions football season, and of the memories that had not yet been lost to time. The sunshine beamed through the front window and onto the counter, where the patrons always preferred to sit. With Pat’s limited budget, nothing more than a J&D fan could keep the hot spirits from turning into boiling ones. The walls, though burning under their thick coat of paint, were used to display local high school and college insignia to promote ambience.

Among all of this ... stood Emperor Schnizborgin, tyrannical ruler of Kepler-62f, who had just embarked upon his intergalactic colonialism. "Greetings, relative mortals," he spoke, phaser in hand. The extraterrestrial stood an imposing two meters, his body of a viscous yet muscular structure, cloaked in seemingly indestructible synthetic material. The shape and characteristics of his head roughly resembled that of a human, save for the spiked tentacles emerging from his eye sockets, both of which were surveying the immediate surroundings ghoulishly. His green, porous skin appeared to be absorbing and emitting oxygen at a fantastic rate, presumably due to the considerable rate of respiration necessary for a body of such physical strength. "We of the Fgfasdf;lkml come in peace. That is, if you primitive homo sapiens have enough intelligence to submit to my autocracy."

If you guys can complete the story by next month's newsletter, we will mention it and summarize the story. To add to the story, check out the topic here.

RuneFest Recollections

In this section, Sal's member Clue discusses his experience at the 2014 RuneFest

Morning has risen! It is time to embark upon an epic journey to Tobacco Dock, London where I will be joining thousands of fellow scapers in a wondrous event called RuneFest. I set off on my way boarding the train, and upon arrival to the location I was greeted by a friendly user who went by the rsn KingMDatta, or KMD. We spoke at length about RuneScape and what we have achieved or aim to achieve in the game. He was an OSRS player and I was an EoC player but we both shared the same thing: the love for RuneScape.

After about an hour of waiting in line, we were allowed to go inside the courtyard of Tobacco Dock where I went to get my wristband. I met the Jmod Kalaya, who had so helpfully arranged everything for me and Supersal69 to get into the event without our tickets. Then there were another 30-45 minutes or so of queuing, with which fun was had with the Jmods starting a series of Mexican waves through the crowd and recording it all. Mod Mark had come specially dressed for the occasion in a wondrous Zaros costume and nobody knew it was him until later.

The queue was allowed inside the event and upon my entry a roar of applause and cheers erupted, as I was the 99th person to enter the event! I was level 99 queuing!! Upon entry the sights were amazing; foliage and leaves were abundant. The livestream rooms looked amazing with their elven forest themes, and this was just the upstairs! I waited inside the computer area for Supersal69 to arrive but decided to explore for a while as she was making her way to the event.

As I went downstairs I was greeted with the sites of multiple different areas and stalls. I explored and began to work my way to the events that would reward me with skilling chips (purely cosmetic poker chips). The first event I participated in was the Cabbage Facepunch Bonanza, in which I had to throw bananas into buckets from a distance which I found not overly difficult due to being an avid darts player.

As I made my way around the event, I received a message that Supersal69 had arrived, and we met up outside the Nihil Pit and explored together around the whole event.

I met many different Youtubers such as GrossGore, B0aty, His Lordship, and more, and we went to the Golden Gnome awards where hilarity ensued when one of B0atys' friends attempted to go up onstage and completely fell over trying.

The Elves of Prifddinas (people role-playing as elves) played live music throughout the event, and the whole atmosphere was amazing. Eventually I had accrued all eight of the skill chips and went to the bank to obtain my special skill chip that is awarded to those who manage to obtain all of them.

At the end of the night there was an afterparty where all the RuneScapers had fun and danced throughout the rest of the night, with a balloon drop as well! It finally reached the time for me to depart from RuneFest 2014 and I can honestly say that it was one of the best times I have ever had. Jagex did a good job on this and speaking to all the Jmods was a nice bonus. I left the event with KMD and we both got on the same train home, leaving each other at the train station to head our separate ways.

The special RuneFest exclusive in-game item this year was a Home Teleport emote in which the player rides on top of Sunfreet from the Dominion Tower. It is a well-made emote.

This was a documentation of my RuneFest experience. Thanks for reading!

-Clue

Contributors

Writers: Micael Fatia, Clue, Guitarguy, Shooter585
Other: Lilshu, Sobend, Salmoneus (for being cool)