RSBandB's 6th Birthday Events

posted by Shane on 23 July 2010 at 18:12

As you may or may not know our birthday is August 6th. On August 6th, 2004 Mike and I officially launched RSBandB. To celebrate that, as usual, the Events Crew is running the festivities. We have a great selection of events for you, be sure to check the individual topics for specialized information.

  • RSBandB Photo (ongoing) - A photo taking competition on RuneScape. Images are posted to RuneWire and then judged by the Events Crew.
  • Boss Takedown (Tuesday, July 27) - Boss slaying, the boss monster chosen by you, the community.
  • Fishing Trawler (Wednesday, July 28) - A trip to the old classic, the Fishing Trawler. Don't forget your bailing buckets and Swamp Paste.
  • Hot Potato (Friday, July 30) - RSBandB's version of tag and musical chairs to a degree.
  • Scavenger Hunt (Tuesday, August 3) - A redo of RSBandB's classic scavenger hunt event, this time all over Gielenor.
  • Wilderness Takeover (Wednesday August 4) - A Revenant hunt throughout the wilderness in Free-to-Play.
  • The Amazing Rune Race (August 6, August 7) - A miniaturized version of RSBandB's Amazing Rune Race. Tasks will take place in the cities described in the topic.
  • Site Owner Wars (Saturday, August 7) - A battle between Mike and Shane. Teams will be formed at the event.
  • Star Hunting (Saturday, August 7, after Site Owner Wars) - A hangout that will result in mining experience for all.
  • TF2 Party Mode (Monday, August 9) - Come hang out in the RSBandB Team Fortress 2 server. We'll have party mode on, good times for all.

Of course be sure to check each of these topics for detailed information.

From this point forward we'll be promoting community hosted events that are posted within the specifications of the Events forum. This means that if you post an event with a clear location, clear start time, and it is posted earlier than 48 hours to the event we will add the event to our event rotator. To have your event added please pm Mike or myself. Also, if you manage to successfully execute your event we will issue you a competition winner rank for the month following your event.

Hope to see you all there.

Community High Scores

June In Review

posted by Shane on 1 July 2010 at 18:47

June has left us and that means it's time to start July. That also means that RSBANDBInformer! is now 4 years old! RSBANDBInformer! first published a monthly issue on June 30, 2006. Thank you to everyone over the past 4 years who has made RSBANDBInformer! what it is. I will have more Informer related news later.

This month in Runescape articles we started off with Tim's Miscellaneous Hunter Training Part 3 which wraps up the series covering level 60 to level 99. Jason's "What'cha" series continues with What'cha Chowin'? Marco discussed past economic updates of Runescape, more specifically what succeeded and what failed. While Chris gave us a primer on the real shape of combat. The next two articles took a look at Runescape from the perspective of a seasoned veteran. Kirby's article discusses changes that were made and then reversed in Le Classic Runescape. Finally, Alex discusses the beauty of System Updates.

June was also E3, which of course means that our gaming specialists were busy. E3 was covered from two different angles, new technology and new games. Before E3 started we also published a review of Red Dead Redemption.

Conversely the tech department took it easy and stayed cool. You can find out how to keep your laptop cool here in part 1 of this two part article. Part 2 will be available soon. Finally, I gave created a thorough description on just what exactly Software Engineering is.

Last but not least comes our first guest article. The guest article goes in to detail on Jagex's new approach to fan sites, titled Jagex and Fan Sites: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. This article was written by Brad. With that being said I'd like to remind you that you have until July 14th to send guest article proposals to us. Remember, if you have an idea of something you think would make a good article, send us a proposal and we will most likely approve it. You can find more information about the procedure here.

June saw Runecrafting be chosen for the first time as Skill of The Month. Reventon42 won this months competition with 6,424,175 experience gained. Congratulations, here is your trophy:

Image

The July competition is already underway and the skill is Ranged. In other Events Crew related news look out for the RSBandB birthday events in the second half of July, RSBandB's birthday is August 6th. Keep your eye out for these events as they are often our biggest events of the year.

In forum related news we have made a few organizational changes to the forums. Head on over to the linked topic and let us know what you think. We would also appreciate it if you would let us know what resources you would like in order to aide you in hosting your own events for the community.

Starting this month RSBANDBInformer! will be answering readers' questions. The readers' questions will be asked in a topic for each category. The questions will then be compiled and answered by the group. The answers will then by posted later in the month. You can post your questions in the respective topics: Runescape, Gaming, and Tech.

We are also going to be doing a series of live Q&A's by way of Google Wave. These will be used to allow general chat with the RSBANDBInformer! divisions. The Q&A's will take place through July:

  • Runescape Q&A: July 10th at 2pm RSBandB Time/MDT (1pm PDT, 4pm EDT, 8pm UTC, 9pm BST)
  • Tech Q&A: July 13th at 7pm RSBandB Time/MDT (6pm PDT, 9pm EDT, 1am UTC, 2am BST)
  • Gaming Q&A: July 22nd at 5pm RSBandB Time/MDT (4pm PDT, 7pm EDT, 11pm UTC, 12am BST)

Information about joining the Q&A's can be found here.

That's all for this month and thank you once again to everyone (readers and staff) who have made RSBANDBInformer! what it has become over the past 4 years.

Forum Restructuring

posted by Mike on 28 June 2010 at 07:50

As you should have noticed if you are a member of our community (if not, why not sign up and introduce yourself?), the forums have been restructured a bit after discussions with and suggestions from the moderator staff. Over the years with the additions of new forums and with the removal of old forums that were phased out, the category structure got a little strange.

We hope you will find this new order more logical in both category seperation and in the ordering of importance.

The only forum which has been removed is the RuneScape Fake Pictures forum because of declining interest. All the topics that were in that forum have been moved to Runescape Related Media, and new fake images may still be posted in that forum as long as they are labeled as being a fake.

The RuneScape Questions forum has had it's topic broadened a bit to include topics of any small advice you may have on RuneScape to the community. If activity in this forum does not increase, it too may be phased out.

I'd also like to point out that our auto-locking procedure has changed a bit. The first page of topics in most forums will remain unlocked unless the discussion has come to a conclusion or the topic author requests it's lock, in which case it will be locked by a moderator. A few forums such as news forums have been changed to order topics by topic creation date instead to accomodate this. An example is the RSBANDBUpdate! Forum where a few of the older episodes can still be discussed instead of just the newest one.

Finally, we'd like to ask you guys for suggestions on how to encourage community users to host more of their own events. We always get complaints about the times of our official hosted events, but the Community Events Forum is largely unused. We've tried lots of event times for official events in the past and have decided to just settle for times that bring in the most people, but that doesn't stop you from hosting your own events. The glory days for events in that forum was before the end of 2007 when the GE and new restrictions on trade were introduced, but there is still lots of fun to be had in RuneScape with others. What is stopping people from hosting their own events?