Runescape: RS3 Finally Released

Ready or not, Runescape 3 is officially out.  Monday July 22 2013, was the release date.  I had some worries about it since the beta seemed a little unstable, even as recently as the weekend before.

Some of those fears were justified.  There were some hiccups... and a few louder, ruder, noises... at the time of release.  Monique and I still have audio problems, so that's not been fixed yet.  She got a black screen on login, though it didn't happen to me this time.  Both of us have had our action bar go 'missing in action'.  People complained about slow frame rates and disconnects.  I noticed the Fairy Ring dialer was no longer see-through.  Not a big deal, but annoying.  Later it was fixed.  Other minor issues, but nothing worth griping about.

Thankfully, the good far outweighs the bad.  I'm really enjoying all the customizations.  Still tinkering with screen design, but that's pure fun.  I like having a horizontal control window at the bottom of the screen, but still playing around with proportions and sizes.  It might also be fun to have a vertical control wall.  Or even an 'L' shape.  You may have noticed, I don't care for asymmetrical design.  My game window needs to be a clean rectangle.

One of the best new features is the minimap.  Having the Home teleport button on it is cool.  Making it resizable was like getting Christmas early.  I'm not a social player, so the chat window doesn't help me.  Except for actual game messages.  The re-design makes chat settings easier, so credit where it's due.

I would have liked the action bar to be much more versatile, in terms of size.  It's just a tad too long.  And the action bar selector (1-5) I'd have made a bit larger.  On the good side, you can keybind nearly everything.  And there are two new buttons on the action bar, both reflecting items in backpack.

That's the interface system.  Not an in-depth review, just a few things that caught my attention.

As far as the Battle of Lumbridge... what battle?  In and of itself, the event is pretty interesting.  But calling it a battle seems like overkill.  I saw two gods in a stalemate.  There was a lot of peripheral damage to buildings.  Huge damage, by player character standards.  But still, on the god scale, just collateral.

Additionally, it's hard to call it a battle when we as players don't get to fight that much.  If you go into the dead zone between the two gods, you can collect divine tears to help the god of your choice, and you can fight opposing npc's.  That sounds kind of warlike.  But it's hard to get a fight, there are more players than npc's.  Tough to get there in time to share a kill, much less actually have your own fight.

So... Battle of Lumbridge?  No.  Stalemate of Lumbridge is more like it.  Other than that, it's a decent premise.  I spoke with Duke Horatio to help in the rebuilding, and earned 32k toward Dungeoneering.  From what I can tell, this seems to be a once-a-week event where you can help the Duke decide how to rebuild.

If you're curious, there were two families who had lost homes, one family Saradomists, the other Zamorakians.  With limited resources, you have to pick whether to help one family or the other, or both of them.  I chose both.

The one thing that does annoy me is the tears randomly appearing in my backpack.  They can't be banked.  They take up inventory space.  So, unless you want to dedicate a backpack space to them, you have to periodically visit Lumbridge and deposit them.  I like the idea, but wish they were less obtrusive.

Hopefully, the glitches will be ironed out soon.  I truly like the interface system.  It's going to take some getting used to, but that's just a matter of retraining  old habits.  Like reaching to the upper right corner for the minimap.  I may be an old dog, but I can still learn new tricks.