Grand Exchange Central Forums

This comes from a blog post I did almost a year ago. I figured I'd include it here again just as a way to fill forum space, and also because the new CEO of Jagex has mentioned twice now that weather has been kicked around the office a little. Sounds like something they may actually consider doing. Anyway, remember this post is a little old. But the concepts are still fresh.

Quote:If I had to name one thing about Runescape that truly disappoints me, it is its complete lack of weather. Other quality MMORPGs incorporate weather systems, and I even fondly remember playing a text based MUDD in the early nineties that attempted basic weather features. Weather is long overdue in Runescape.

Weather should have many wide ranging effects on day to day life in Runescape. Imagine not having to water crops if you plant them while it is raining. Or better yet (or worse depending on your opinion), crops in a drought stricken area may need additional watering to ensure proper growth. Maybe a freak snow storm could block the pass up through White Wolf Mountain and force players to go around another way till the weather clears. Rare rains in the desert would allow players to walk freely without needing water sacks. And forget about having a high success rate on making fires if it is raining.

Combat could also be effected by weather, and more specifically by the rain. Rangers would find their attack skill slightly hampered in stormy areas. Mages on the other hand would find their water and wind spells enhanced while their fire and earth spells would become muddied (pun intended). Warriors would find fighting beasts who use fire attacks less prone to getting high hit damage, just as cold weather Ice Warriors would be stronger in the snow.

Other skills would be effected also. The aforementioned firemaking skill would have obvious effects. River Fishermen might find that their catches are more bountiful immediately after a storm has passed through while fish in the seas would be harder to find. There would be new items for Craftsmen to make, like raincoats and umbrellas that would temper the ill effects of rain on agility. Maybe there could also be fireproof tinderboxes? New random events could occur while it is storming. Maybe that player you are chatting to suddenly gets hit by lightning and gets blown clear across to Camelot.

Of course, to do this properly, every skill that is effected should have an equal amount of pros and cons like the Mages I mentioned before. But coming up with balance should not be too difficult for the creative team at Jagex.

Logistically speaking, the graphics would probably not be a major issue. A rain effect could be overlaid, while making the scene slightly darker and removing shadows (the last two of which are supposedly incorporated into the game already). An occasional high brightening could simulate lightning. The difficult part would be getting a decent weather simulation going that would allow most of Runescape to be “normal” most of the time but still allowing weather patterns to realistically drift across the world. Jagex wouldn’t need the software of the Weather Channel, but they would still need to put a lot of thought and effort into the simulation. A weather system would probably be as complicated an update as the graphical update of July 2008.

I've always wanted weather myself,and I think other people do too but it's a bit too late now. Imagine how frustrating it would be if you buy 200k fire runes and 50k death runes and run out to do some magic, only to get rained on, but now you don't have enough money to buy water runes, or you just don't want to. Our training has never been effected by weather, and I really don't see changing that having any good effects. What should've happened is Jagex should've introduced a weather system with RS2, even if it was just a line of text appearing in your chat box, "Clouds begin to gather. A storm will hit in between the next 15-45 minutes." Then Jagex could've updated it as the game advanced.

Great ideas, but just too late to really make them work. =/ But I'd really rather play in an RS with weather that effects us.

Some of the ideas in my opinion seem a bit extreme.

Well they sort of have a day and night thing going on with the wideness and fog.

I think i also heard them talking about sky boxes in one development diary