ChrisT

Another year has came and almost gone and it’s been a very… interesting year for pvp. They’ve released 1 safe mini-games and changing the already existent bounty hunter to please the older style pk’ers. Because this new bounty hunter had (and still has) some fixes left in the works, Jagex added a few updates to the system to keep a few people out but still allow for great drops.

Well to get on with things, first up we had the ultimate way of adding complete chaos to the world of player vs. player. Soul wars is a massive pvp/pvm game where you go around killing slayer monsters for fragments to give to the soul obelisk hence weakening the avatar and killing it to win. This all in all is fun. But what you’ve got to realize is unless you’re on the side with a clan of high levels working together then you probably won’t win. Your other choice might be going to your own avatar and mass PK’ing a ton of high levels so they have to run all the way back from either their graveyard or from their starting point. The best way of doing this (if your avatar is infested with the other team) is to have 70 magic and ice bursting them to death. Its great magic xp and you can just have fun with it. Another place to use ice burst is at the obelisk itself. There should be tons of players from the other team there and it would work quite well. Since bursting might cost a lot you might just want to run around with your best gear killing everyone in sight if you’re the pvp type.

Bounty hunter was a whole different beast. Closed down for fixing it was brought back up in May to revive the dormant pker side to many that didn’t find pvp worlds enticing. This brought back many mechanics of the old style of wilderness PK’ing along with the new drop lists from pvp (enhanced a little bit), and added the old BH system of targ’s and rogues. Yes a few players complained on the forums about not having the old drops of an entire player’s inventory it was just a rant that couldn’t win over because of the risk of bringing back RWT.

The problem though that soon came up was players started gaining enormous amounts of cash. This was because along with bringing out bounty hunter Jagex allowed pk’ers to gain drops such as whips, dragon fire shields, and barrows equipment even if the opponent didn’t die with one. As one player said, “I know I’m not the sharpest guy irl, but my visage doesn’t look draconic enough to be a 20m drop.” So in June Jagex changed the drop tables to not include any barrows, whips, or visage drops unless the player is lucky enough to kill an opponent that is risking one.

Another problem that had been on players’ minds was the fact 26k was alive and thriving. It actually took around a year for Jagex to actually come out with a small fix for 26king. The small fix was to slow down the activity by making both trickers carry 76k. Truthfully it didn’t slow down at all. People just adapted. I don’t really believe Jagex can fix tricking because in their 2nd fix they tried slowing the process down even more by killing “revenge kills”. Now a revenge kill could either be targeted toward those that try to PJ their opponent after they’ve been killed, or targeting 76kers since really you are taking turns killing each other so it is considered revenge. I would say 76k has practically stopped but it’s probably just gone undercover into forums completely meant for 76king. This is because, although revenge kills was obliterated, three or more people could get together and create a chain of 76k killing and loop it back around. This would nullify the update and ignore it as long as you could find 2 others to participate.

One last problem was one itemers’ spoiling fun for pk’ers. Now the solution that Jagex implemented did help kill two birds with one stone. Along with the 76k/no venge-kills updates, Jagex thought they’d change pvp worlds to exclude the “protect item” prayers and would automatically skull players for until they left the world +15 minutes on a regular world. This in turn made it very dangerous for anyone to bring high value items such as whips, barrows armor, dragon fire shields, etc. Once everyone saw the impact this made everyone began selling these high priced items and they crashed. Jagex heard pker’s plea and created BH +1 worlds. This allowed anyone on the world to keep their top value item (according to high alchemy values.) Personally I liked this because I always forgot to put on protect item and sometimes had a hard time skulling myself. These +1 worlds reversed the crash and made everything ok again. For the most part, 1 itemers would only go for +1 worlds while the players who wanted to pk without those would go to the regular bounty worlds.

Now that I’ve gone through the big updates of 2009 I thought id perhaps speculate on future updates of 2010. Maybe these can jog your mind while they wait to be released or just might live on forever without something being done.

• As for future tweaks id have to say Jagex will hopefully nail this 76k’ing.
• Said this in the past… But I’d like to see drops that don’t give pure cash.
• Jagex just released a “new year message” saying they will be releasing some new combat armor.
• Also within the same message it says they will be filling in gaps to other skills. This could give pk’ers anything from new potions (maybe something that will keep it all balanced this time) to even newer fish above the rocktails, or even the great idea of some plant you grow in farming to help k0 someone possibly. The ideas are endless when it comes to skills tying into pvp.

And with that a bid farewell until January 2010. Have a happy new year everyone! And good luck on any PVP’ing you might come across.