The dragonkin escaped through the devastation of their world and also the birth of our own - an achievement of incredible technology with OSRS Accounts and tenacity that the people of Gielinor can't even hope to rival.
Are there any big-scale design changes that are in the works for this update or something that players haven't seen before?
Each of our quests is unique gameplay and are often accompanied by unique design challenges. A portion of this quest is a an element of strategy that doesn't exist in other games. We're also preparing for several future pieces of content that tie into the storyline, although we're not going to launch these right away alongside the quest.We had been discussing Desperate Measures when we were creating Desperate Times, and we'd talked about the story of both prior to that. When we design new content, we first draft a pitch which is passed on for review by stakeholders before getting a approve, and production will usually begin immediately.
With Desperate Measures we shuffled between development to ensure we could help other projects, like Archaeology and Farming/Herblore 120. So we had to modify the design several times to fit the timeline we had to work with. Regarding the bigger story the lore council has been discussing the details of the story and the direction it's heading for a while now.
The quest was in plan/synopsis form for a long time. As the team began the developing the entire thing began to flesh out the synopsis into an entire experience. They had to come up with how to prototype, design and implement unique gameplay elements, and discover ways to present the information from the high-level lore of the game in a way that is accessible and engaging.
How was the experience to do this work in the midst of the onset of the pandemic's global spread? Have you encountered particular challenges?
It's definitely not perfect. Making content is an art and this kind of creative thinking really benefits from having people around to share ideas with. Although Zoom is a great tool however, it doesn't have the same kind of connection to people, which means it is more difficult to share ideas. There have been a few hiccups in development because of something not being translated correctly across Zoom that I doubt would have occurred in person.
In addition, you have to consider the reality of dealing with changes in addition to the stress that comes with an outbreak across the globe and the responsibilities of family members this creates an unsatisfactory environment for growth. But we're proud of the fact that the RuneScape team isn't not flexible, and I'm very happy with the way everyone came together to get the most out of an extremely difficult circumstance. I'm thrilled with what we've created through desperate Measures.
The team is looking to publish monthly updates to the content. Naturally, things will be a bit sporadic however, what's the general concept behind how you plan to push out this report?
As the world becomes becoming more homebound we decided that waiting for more portions of content to come out every couple of months was not the best method. Everyone wants to entertain ourselves and so checking back the status of RunesScape every month ought to be thrilling, as players check at what's changed often. This presents challenges because we've developed a narrative and created concepts with Cheap OSRS Fire Cape based on a distinct design model for release, however we've come up with an idea. Every update should provide a new goal that comes with a big reward attached to it and for all updates to be a reflection of the story is being developed.