President Bush ‘Ownz’ on Runescape

Washington, January 14, 2007 — Prior to the November 7 midterm elections, many political analysts wondered how President Bush would handle the last two years of his presidency if the Democrats seized control of the Congress. Nearly all agreed it would be a lonely time for a President accustomed to being surrounded by friends in Congress. None of the analyst’s observations included the possibility that President Bush would retreat from the world stage to the world of online gaming. It appears, however, that that is just what President Bush has done as he has been using the “Internets” to do more than to just use “the Google” to look at images of his ranch inCrawford,Texas, but is a passionate player of the online game Runescape.

Runescape, made by British game developer Jagex Limited, is a Java-programmed Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game based in the fantasy world of Gielinor. Players create characters and develop skills in order to undertake quests, earn wealth, battle monsters and fight other players. Runescape has over nine million active free players and over 850,000 paying members, of which President Bush is one. A source inside the White House revealed that many senior members of the White House staff became concerned over the President’s continuing removal from day-to-day affairs around mid November when he began missing his own Presidential Daily Briefings and on the rare occasion he did attend he kept referring to world leaders as “noobs” or yelling “owned” or “woot” at various points in the meeting. It has gotten to the stage that he now refuses to show up to his meetings and rarely holds press conferences.

Another White House source who wishes to remain anonymous and is familiar with the President’s various Runescape characters noted that President Bush discovered Runescape via various conversations with some of his daughters’ various boyfriends during March and April of 2006. According to the White House source, this infamous meeting led to President Bush creating his prized combat level 67 range staker from which he claims to won a green party hat and over seven million (Runescape currency). This staker is more of a hybrid (some mage levels in addition to range levels in order to increase his hitpoints along with a bit of defense, but still without prayer) ranger than a pure ranger and the President has excelled in setting up the stakes and rules in the Dueling Arena to his advantage. 

A Review of Beta Patch 14′s Increased Difficulty

Last Monday Jay Wilson randomly announced via Twitter that they had doubled the monster damage for levels 1-13. This kindled a lot of positive feedback in the community as the most common complaint from beta testers seems to be how easy the game is. This notion forced Blizzard into making a promotional video for BlizzCon 2011 to promise players that in the later difficulties they will die, often. Despite that and their justification that the early game is a tutorial and should be treated as such, Blizzard made the call to beef it up.

The swift deployment of beta patch 14 caught us all by surprise as I expected to try these changes out around mid to late March at the earliest, not 3 days after the tweet. Not that I’m complaining, I was really looking forward to seeing how the difficulty has evolved with the sweeping buffs to all of the monsters in the beta.

My first go at the new patch was with a fresh Barbarian. Both the Monk and Barbarian received a passive 30% incoming damage reduction from all sources with this patch, which makes a lot of sense given that they will find themselves in harms way more often than the ranged classes. Blizzard has dabbled in trying to implement game mechanics that are more dangerous for ranged attackers (such as the Mortar modifier) which ultimately didn’t have the desired impact in practice, so this seems like an effective compromise. Although some may argue that 30% is overpowered, it’s likely an arbitrary number that will be adjusted as needed for balance if melee survivability ends up much higher than ranged.

Once I got past the introductory camp phase and onto Old Tristram Road, it was clear that Jay’s tweet and the patch notes weren’t just hot air. This beta test that I could previously play by resting my head on one side of my keyboard and rolling my face to the other and back was actually demanding my attention. The trivial AI found in normal kept the mobs from attacking in any sort of coherant or threatening manner, but the damage output is clearly more dangerous.

Where players will find the most risk will be against rare/champion packs and bosses. One particular scenario comes to mind where I was fighting a rare “Nightmarish” pack and got horrified into a group of champion Grotesque mobs. This was a near-death experience, even with my seasoned StarCraft 2 APM paying dividends in a swift and efficient striking of the Q key to consume a potion. Countless hardcore characters will weep and perish in similar unpredictable situations that different boss modifiers will throw them into, especially in later difficulties where rare packs can roll more than 1 modifier.