The Jagex crew responsible for Old School RuneScape have a dual task: Maintain the state of a game trapped in time while tastefully adding content to reinvigorate a dedicated player base. While that’s been successful for many years since launch, another piece of new content has been rejected. Warding was to be the first new skill added to the game, targeting the ability to produce magical items through crafting.
It’s known that getting kitted out with magical combat is expensive: Only shop vendors and rare item drops supply upcoming wizards. The original design document outlined a whole revamp of weapons, armors and crafting stations geared towards Warding. One of the more controversial changes would’ve been Battle Wards, offering bonuses to players standing near the wards once placed. The developers of Old School made a handy video explaining:
After a few iterations upon the design it was finally time to poll. Jagex has the tight threshold of 75% to beat for a feature to get approved in the game. Yet, with 125,147 votes cast the player base has missed the mark by less than 10%. Warding was approved by 66.4% of voters, while 33.6% rejected.The Old School Team had this to say:
We know you’re curious about what the next steps are, and we need to establish that exactly ourselves. We’re going to do more digging into whether there’s general appetite for a new skill – and if so, what that should look like and how it should be brought into game. We’ll also be taking this opportunity to review all three skills polled in Old School’s history so far, and how we can get you all involved in design so that any future skills are what you, the community, want. The one thing we will commit to is that we will take you all on this journey with us, bringing forward new ideas and proposals as early in the concept process as possible so that your voice can be heard, and we can make something we’re all proud of.
Not all doom and gloom for the RuneScape community though, as players can look forward to Song of the Elves, Last Man Standing and this year’s RuneFest sure to pack announcements.
