Runescape's Free Trial Membership

Before playing World of Warcraft and Second Life, I had been a player in Runescape. Probably the most popular of the MMOs, it's gone a long way since the days when only a few thousand were on at once when I gave it a try in 2003. Currently, it boasts 10 million active accounts. It's been called a "freemium" or "velvet rope" game as you need to pay a subscription to get the full membership, which gets you access to more than half the map, more bank space, being able to use certain items, more quests, etc. Someone called the free version a good starting MMO for anyone new to this genere of games.

Recently, I got a notice in the mail about free two week trial periods for full memberships available. So a little curious about the game I used to spend so much time in, I signed up and went back in. Going about, I noticed after about five years, quite a bit was still the same, and a few things had changed. For one, the world now had a name: Gielinor. Before then, it had simply been called "Runescape" like the game.

One place I went to was probably a good one for those who hadn't played for a while (like me) was Burthorpe, just west of the area where free players are limited to. There, a number of miniquests reintroduced me to the skills, as well as introducing me to a new one: Summoning (the other introduced since I was away was Dungeoneering). There was also the baby troll pet I got from one of the smaller quests.

The two week free memberships are available until September 7th. For anyone interested, head to http://www.runescape.com/. For help, two hint sites I'd found useful in the past are Rune HQ and Tip.it.

*Addition* Oh, the thieving training quest in Taverly, south of Burthorpe, take it, it's hilarious.

Bixyl Shuftan

Builders Brewery Recovering from Mass Ejection

Last month, the popular Builder's Brewery group found almost all of it's members ejected. On October 19th, their membership plummeted from almost 17,000 members, to just 400.

We're not exactly sure what exactly caused it, and we are not going to point fingers, as that would be useless. But it seemed to have started during Linden Lab's critical server software upgrade that day, along with rolling restarts that came with no warning countdown even. There was tremendous issues across the grid, including inability to log in, no teleporting, groups and friends not loading, overwhelming lag even in an empty full sim (causing us to cancel at least two classes that day). Our two sims were greatly affected during this time, which apparently and sadly, "may" have caused our group bot to get stuck in constant eject mode. We may never know the exact reason, but it was a combination that created the "perfect storm" where everything all comes together at the wrong time. Steps have been taken to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again.

A few weeks later, the group still hasn't recovered from the crash, still only a fraction of their onetime numbers, and has continued to get the word out for people to rejoin, "copy and paste the following link in your local chat window to pull up the group join window -
secondlife:///app/group/04f595b0-cdc8-97f0-e710-9564824c03b2/about/ ... We want to thank everyone for your incredible outpouring of support and love we have received during this time. We hope to recover from this loss swiftly with your help and patience."

Builder's Brewery is at Builders Brewery, (110, 157, 23)

The Builders Brewery Members are some of SL's finest creators, as well as new creators, who take great pride in their work, and strive for excellence in ALL they do. Our goals are to help improve the visual and structural quality of SL, by encouraging intelligent design, builds & innovations, through education, sharing & support. Events & classes held regularly. Learning & helping one another is key.

Other articles: Prim Perfect