I’ve been thinking about how the Fantasy genre, in general, is beginning to plateau. Even in literature, it is very hard to write a truly unique fantasy book. Everything nowadays seems to revolve around the Lord of the Rings model, a storyline where the main characters are on a quest for ____. This plot has found its way into nearly every single fantasy MMO ever made. In Runescape, we complete quests for rewards. It’s this simplistic storytelling device that was compelling a long time ago, but what about now? Sci-fi is a generally more flexible genre that can exceed the simple “let’s go on a mission to Mordor!” idea.

Will people gradually get disinterested or not? I think that it could go either way. We all grew up hearing fairy tales, and these fairy tales have changed over time to be more than just an imprisoned princess in a castle or an evil queen who must be defeated. Can this redundancy be solved by incorporating Fantasy into other genres like Sci-fi? I can see it now.. the knights of the Round Table must defeat the Klingon Empire from encroaching onto their vast kingdom.

I’m really not sure any more, but it just seems that Fantasy games are in dire need of a new storyline.

..someone who heavily enjoys unicorns and sunshine. There exists a short period of time in each day that my younger brother does not plant himself in front of the television with a controller in his hands. During this time, I managed to sneak in about an hour of Halo 3 time. So, what do I think of the game? Well, there are good things about it.In the beginning, there was absolutely enchanting looking forest with rays of sunlight..and serene rivers. I stopped to take it all in when, out of nowhere, some idiot moron blurts out “This is gonna take some doing, Chief!” I turn to see a SQUADRON of annoying people around me. I mean, tsh, where did they all come from? Sure, it didn’t help that I went to fix myself a sandwich during some boring intro cut scene, but come now.

Well now I feel like I have to toughen up and play by the rules. So I walk myself over across some river for an “EV somethingorother” and some weird alien things start firing at me. I’m sitting here wondering where on earth the deer and happy bunny rabbits are and here’s this weird looking army of crazy people shooting green lasers at me! People stood in line for this game?? After 15 minutes of walking around alongside some deep-voiced vulture-shaped guy, I realised that the entire game was going to be like this and I shut off the xbox.

Why can’t they just make Halo 2.7? A Halo where I can walk around and not be bothered by weird things?

While most sites concentrate on the game of Runescape itself, Rob and Ren, co-founders of The Unofficial Gower Archive, steer clear of this well-trodden path by focusing on the most prominent figurehead of Jagex Ltd—Andrew Gower. Though a relatively new site, Gower Archive is packed with fascinating information about the mysterious Mr. Gower, including pictures, his curriculum vitae, and even old renders of Runescape Classic. I had the pleasure of interviewing the two to learn about the hard work that goes into making such a unique site.

1. How did you two come to meet each other? Was it a mutual interest in Andrew Gower?

Rob: We met on Wikipedia, after I recreated an article there on Andrew Gower with all the knowledge I had on him, using an archive of his personal website. He posted in the discussion page claiming he had a few pictures of Gower. I contacted him via Wikipedia and then talked to him through AIM and MSN. That’s when research on Andrew Gower commenced.

Ren: Pretty much. Through our Wikipedia contributions, Rob found out that I had material relating to Andrew Gower which wasn’t generally available. He got in touch with me it in April, and I was glad to find someone else who found it interesting. We’ve never met in person though, as we live in different countries.

2. Which tools do you primarily use to find information on Gower? What limitations do they have?

Rob: Basically the most prominent tools we’ve used are Google and the Wayback Machine on archive.org. The only thing that limits us is that some pages aren’t archived that we’d like to view. However, we’ve gained A LOT of information using those two tools alone. We also asked a Mac programmer named Nicholas Shanks about Gower. Apparently, Mr. Shanks went to school with Andrew. He was wondering if the article on Wikipedia was about the same Andrew he knew, and it turned out that it was.

3. In your opinion, what was “the tip of the iceberg” when you started your search into the life of Andrew Gower? What bit of knowledge caused you to delved deeper?

Rob: I guess it was when I found his website on the archives. I became immensely interested about what the guy has done with his life. Then I met Ren, and it sparked my interest further. My main interest is DeviousMUD, but there’s not much left about it sadly.

Ren: Good question. Originally my interest was fairly passive – back in 2001 Andrew was pretty accessible, as in we were both on the IRC channel at the same time, his old website was still up (and not too unknown in the community), and he had his webcam running most of the time. I archived this stuff at the time and didn’t really go out of my way to find more. When I met Rob and found out that he was interested in what I’d found I thought that there might be others out there who felt the same. Andrew Gower is an amazing individual who has achieved a lot and I like a challenge, so I thought it’d be worthwhile to try and find out more about who he was.

4. What process do you go through to determine whether or not a piece of information is legitimate? I’ve looked through your site and noticed that some material is unable to be linked to since it happened in a chatroom or on a site which no longer exists. Essentially, is it up to the visitor to trust you on this type of content?

Rob: Most of the information we have is backed up by trusted sources. Ren finds most of the stuff we have, anyway. He runs it by me and I agree with what he’s got and he uploads it on the site. It’s up to the users to trust our data, but we’re 99.9% sure that our information is completely legitimate.

Ren: There are several main sources for information: the media, websites, personal archives, the Internet Archive, Google Groups and first-hand accounts. I found many of these sources with the help of Google. It is true that much of our content is now impossible or difficult to find elsewhere. However, I’m a bit of a hoarder, so over the years I’ve kept copies of interesting material. Where possible I’ve provided links to working sources on the website, but for the rest you’ll have to trust in us and believe in our confidence regarding the material’s veracity.

The only inconsistency we could find on our website is from the IRC log dated 02 January 2002 and has MrAndrew saying it will be Runescape’s birthday in 7 days time (when other sources say Runescape’s birthday is on the 4th of January). The source is from tip.it and states the information is from the trustworthy Lightning, so we think that it is not fabricated.

However, someone could have got the date wrong somewhere. We have noted this consistency on our website, and if anyone finds something which doesn’t add up then we will definitely investigate it fully.

The material from “Andrew Gower’s Amazing Homepage” was taken directly from the Internet Archive copies of http://www.fitz.cam.ac.uk/~acg29/ and http://www.fitz.cam.ac.uk/users/acg29/ (originally hosted by Fitzwilliam College).

I was around in 2001 when MrAndrew was on IRC and ran the JagexCam and the majority of the logs and images were saved by me all those years ago. I provide dates and timestamps, so if you can track down anyone else who was there at the time then they can confirm it. At the time there was no doubt that it was him, as it had a Cambridge hostname and he possessed knowledge that nobody else could have known (e.g. providing information on upcoming updates). It was also through the IRC channel that I learned of www.runescape.com/runescript.htm which provided information on Runescape Classic’s scripting system.

I’m certain that the pictures of Andrew from JagexCam and his personal website are genuine, as they are from primary sources. The photographs given to me by HawaiiGopher all seem to be of this same person, so I am confident they are all of Andrew Gower.

The homepage contains a quote from Nick Shanks and we’ll have to trust him that he really went to school with Andrew Gower. However, I checked out an old archive of his CV and it all matched up. This was before our site went live, so he couldn’t have gotten the information on which school Andrew went to from us and it would have been pretty hard to find elsewhere.

5. I’ve been dying to ask this one. What is the BIGGEST mystery that you’ve solved about Mr. Gower and what mysteries are you currently trying to solve?

Rob: Well, there’s the penguins. I don’t know why he’s obsessed with penguins but I guess we’ll never really find that out. I’m always interested in finding out how long it took him to learn the Java knowledge he has and what sparked him to make DeviousMUD/RuneScape.

Ren: Rob vaguely remembered that Andrew’s middle name was Christopher, and as Andrew’s e-mail was acg29@cam.ac.uk it seemed plausible. However, we couldn’t just trust our own memory. After much searching to no avail I found definitive proof that his middle initial was C through one of his old Atari games. It was only when I thought of searching for “Gower, Andrew Christopher” yesterday and found a page on the University of Cambridge website which listed that name alongside several known friends of Andrew Gower that our minds could be put to rest and we could make that assertion on our site.

The mystery of the moment is Andrew’s GBA3D engine. If you check the communications section, he talks on IRC about his work on a Game Boy Advance 3D engine that he was intending to show at the 2001 European Computer Trade Show in London. He seemed pretty optimistic about it, going so far as to say it could have some patentable elements. But the story seems to end there, and I’ve heard nothing of it since.

6. Lastly, what do you see for the future of your site? Are you going to expand searches into the other Gower brothers?

Rob: We plan on finding more and more information on the guy as possible. We may add bits of things about other Gowers (considering there’s about like four or five Gowers associated with making games with Andrew) but there’s most likely not as much information on those people as there are on Andrew.

Ren: Much of what we don’t have are not on any website, no matter how much we use search engines. We’ll just have to hope that a visitor has an old IRC log or other material archived and feels like contributing it to us. Many of the photographs were provided by HawaiiGopher after I tracked him down through much Googling because Rob found an old forum post which contained some Andrew Gower pictures. I believe that the more visitors we get, the more likely it is that someone who has something worthwhile to contribute will come along and decide to help out. So spread the word!

As you can see, Rob and Ren have quite the detective skills and they could use your help as well! Their site provides a solid collection of content that leads back to the golden days where Gower brushed shoulders with his own players. These days, though far away, will always live on in the pages of The Unofficial Gower Archives.

Links:
The Unofficial Gower Archive – http://gowerarchive.googlepages.com

I knowww, it’s been a while. I’ve been really busy with uni and, frankly, I haven’t had anything that I wanted to post here yet. Did you notice that “yet” was italicised? That means that I have something that I want to post here, but not right now. I’m going to post my first Informer news article on here when the deadline draws closer to it. I’m sad because not a lot of people read the Informer. Whenever the sticky in the forum is posted, only 1-2 people respond.

We’re working on a way to fix that though. Right now, I just suggested that we post Informer and Update news on the front page. This might get new listeners/viewers to these sections. Anyhow, the article is an interview. A damn good one too. I’ve never really interviewed anyone before, so I hope people find this interesting since I did.

-Stupid Things that Happen in Kristina’s Life-

Ok, so I did a really dumb thing the other day at work. My boss told me to disassemble a large metal display case before I leave to go home and I though “Oh, that’s going to be easy”. I used to work at Ikea and, believe me, I can put things together really quickly. But, I um… didn’t exactly realise that taking apart a dusty old metal case would be so hard. So.. important fact: the display case is next to the window and there is no space on the floor to set it down whilst disassembling it.

So I figure I’d do the LOGICAL thing and start unscrewing the screws from the top and work my way down. The screws are a bit..screwy..because they hold together two panes of the metal siding. That means that when I unscrew all the screws on one side, two panes come down. Well, TWO people are supposed to be taking this thing apart but it was just me. .. Long story short: I unscrewed one side of the case and one pane slipped out of my hand and almost broke the huge window next to it. The only thing that stopped it from doing that was a box I set there earlier XD.

When do you all think I’m going to get fired?

I’ve been thinking about this lately and I realised that after a long time of saying “Oh, yeah. I’d definitely work for them. I bet I could change a lot” that I would never work for them. I was talking about this with Mike and he mentioned how everything that goes wrong with Runescape is a “bug”. Was the naming of an NPC a derogatory name for black people REALLY a bug?

It’s nothing new when I tell you all that Jagex are 10 years behind the times. You know it already and you know that they’re doing nothing to catch up. On RSBANDB, in order to keep the most current new on the front page of the site, we (I never do this, admittedly. :oops:) have to manually copy, paste, and format the article. You know what would cut down on that all? It’s nothing that’s supremely complicated and it’s not brand new technology. It’s called an RSS feed and it wouldn’t take too much effort for them to implement one.

On top of that, I was just delighted to see that the question that I sent to Jagex about whether or not fan sites could use Press images was nicely responded to with a default message that amounted to “Please use our crappy .zip file instead”. Let me give you a taste of what’s in this zip file (I know I’ve complained about the “fan site kit” before, just bear with me).

Now, you might be able to make something with it if you cropped it, painted over it a little, and incorporated it into the design. But you can’t! Jagex’s license (contained in the zip) firmly stipulates that:

a) The images must not be altered in any way, except for resizing or rotating.

Do they even WANT fan sites to look attractive? Because of this, I asked them if they would be willing to allow fan sites to use images in the Press section of the Jagex corporate site. The section does NOT specifically prohibit fan sites from using these images, it just says that they can be used for “review purposes”. So rather than giving me a thoughtful answer, I get told to use their rubbish 3D renders that look like they were made in 1992 by a 14 year old.

Jagex does more than ignore any communities that exist beyond their carefully moderated official forums. In fact, I’m going to go as far as to say that they heavily dislike fan sites. “Oh, but what about the lite high scores page?” Do you all really think that Jagex did that so that fan sites would have an easier time accessing them? Almost certainly not. There was obviously some problem that was being caused by fan sites accessing their high scores and rather than disallowing them to do so, they made a light version. Granted, they decided to do one nice thing.

If there could be one thing to sum up Jagex’s attitude to fan sites, it would be this. Do you notice something? “Investigation in the Community Team”. There’s only a team to investigate communities, not inspire them or help them in anyway. How do you expect us to pay money each month to you all if you put us out to be the bad people?

Well, I took some of the criticisms to heart. Believe it or not, I’m a person who has feelings and logging on after a really long day to someone calling me a “c**t” wasn’t really something that brightened my day. I’m all for freedom of speech and, frankly, I don’t care about who said it and why. I’ve decided to improve on these criticisms.

So I put my mind to work and I came up with this.

I’ve been thinking recently about what categories fan sites fit into and I’ve come up with a few. Granted, there are probable more.. so if you can think of any then let me know. If you take a quick look at my list of Innovative RuneScape Fan Sites below, you’ll see that I chose fan sites that specialise in a certain service or feature. This is the first category that I am going to introduce:

• Service-oriented sites: Sites who are integral to the RS community by offering high-quality services that are unmatchable by larger sites. These smaller sites have a very specific plan of action when it comes to what they offer. RSBANDB’s “claim to fame” came about from the introduction of services that no one else had. It started with quality calculators, then spread to goal and stats signatures. Sites that offer services are often able to stay successful because there’s a smaller group of committed and/or talented people to keep things running. In order to stay a unique and savvy service-oriented fan site, the site needs to offer things that are either a) Not currently offered by any other site or b) Not offered in as high of quality or diversity.
• All-encompassing RS sites: I call these ones “Wal-Mart” fan sites because you can literally go to them for anything. Quest guides, item databases, dungeon maps, etc etc. The list goes on. They’re great sources of obtaining general information about the game. Their communities are often huge, as well as a little impersonal. Because Wal-Mart fan sites are so huge, they have a tendency to lack in providing a consistency in quality of their services. This isn’t unusual since running a fan site of this magnitude is a lot of hard work.
• Advice sites: These sites deal in the realms of giving advice, suggestions, and predictions regarding the game itself (or the community of RS). These sites probably don’t do as well as the above two, but they’re there to help anyone and everyone who needs guidance. I often think that some of these sites should be converted into blogs if the site owner can’t think of a way to expand the site to make it more interactive. There are a few, however, who do an amazing job of bringing functionality to their sites.
• Forums: Now, you might say “Wait a minute, that’s not a site!” but it technically is. Lots of clans represent themselves on forums rather than a full-blown site. Many people decide to develop a community rather than an actual site. In a way, this is good and bad. It’s good in a sense that people who visit these communities get individual help from other members. It’s bad in a sense that getting people to join is the hardest part. An example of a site like this is RSC.
• Illegal/Shady Sites: These sites deal in the “darker” side of Runescape. A dark side of Runescape. Sorry, that made me laugh XD. These sites are more able to monetise their content by selling macros and/or RS Gold.

All of these sites work together in supplying RS players with what they need, legal or not. We all do our part, no matter how small or large we are, in creating a supply to everyone here.

Lately, I’ve been designing a lot of far-into-the-future features for RuneWire. Yesterday, I designed badges that will pull the RSS feed from your RuneWire account and stick it on a nice little image for you to display elsewhere. I’m going to be putting them into sig form soon enough. They’re likely going to be released after we leave beta testing. So, it’s not too far off! Here are the samples.

Here comes the head of a pin part now. I’ve been putting together a design for the client. I had to make it small enough to fit in the corner of your screen while playing, while still including features that you need to use to upload screenshots and such. If there are any other designers who are reading this who can give me any feedback, please do! I’m all for learning new things. What I have so far:

Let me explain this a little for you all. The image uploader is hidden until you click the “>>” (Add Screenshot will be the alt text of the >> button) button. Then, it slides up and you navigate to the file you wish to upload, then click “Go”. The conformation or denial pops up in the uploader box when the file is/isn’t uploaded. This will all be developed in AIR, but we’re waiting for that to go into Beta 2. Cool? Uncool? I think it’s a nice idea. It’d be really cool if RuneWire became really popular, and we could integrate this into a larger RuneScape client that’s already out there. It really depends.

Okay, XD I’ve not wrote a semi-mean post in a while. I don’t know if this is mean. I don’t think it is. I was on DeviantART a few minutes ago and I was looking at a really wonderful self-portrait that an Australian girl took of herself. Here it is. So, I figured I would look around in her gallery a little more and I notice a comment on her userpage that simply said “Link. :)”.

Click the link and compare the two. XD The kid who drew that obviously isn’t a bad artist at all. He knows how to shade and he does have really neat art in his gallery. I just.. I don’t know how he finished that sketch and thought “Oh, this looks wonderful!” She looks like a scary version of James Spader. I just..yeah. If someone ever seriously sketched a picture of me that made me look like I was a different gender, I’d be a little freaked out.

Not to mention that people are supposed to get permission from the original artist (her) before releasing a sketch to the public. I just..yeah. Am I being overly picky? Is that sketch really a “diamond in the rough”?