Runescape year: 2010

Full summary of major changes in Runescape during 2010 from the Informer. Amazingly Dungeoneering appeared in Runespace in April 2010 - less then 9 months ago! Somehow it feels like Dungeoneering was part of the game for a lot longer.

And here are my personal highlights of the year:

• Quests! Jagex continues to make awesome quests. I wouldn't say they outdone 2009 quests, but still I enjoyed pretty much all of them. Especially the Love Story.
• Dungeoneering - duh! A new skill which I found very relaxing.
• Bonus XP weekends - I loved the preparation for the second one (I missed three weeks before the first weekend). It also helped me to get 99 in Herblore, which was nice :)
• Canting Away summer and winter festivals - pure fun and joy
• Partnership with Sal's - very important, huge and somewhat scary step for Runewise
• Series of interviews with Ruescape and Stellar Dawn fan site founders, owners and developers - apart from enjoying the actual interviews I also had very interesting time reaching out and talking to all involved fan sites. Priceless experience.

Questing

Took some time and completed three quests I had long postponed: Elemental Workshop III, Quiet Before the Swarm and Love Story. Gee, I am glad I did them in exactly this order.

Elemental Workshop III was bad. Not exactly hard, but extremely tedious. I actually like sliding puzzles and this one was indeed beautifully designed, but I am not prepared to do exclusively sliding puzzles for 3 hours in a row!

First two times I tried I couldn't make it in 50 turns, but that was OK. I was finally able to complete puzzle #1 and get a hand on the mechanics. Puzzle #2 was fun, but puzzle #3 was already tiring. I was ready for the end of the quest right there and then. But no. There was also puzzle #4, which I did, but couldn't make #5 without restarting #4! Made one bar and... After some poking around I somehow shut down and lowered the rotating thingy in the middle and had to go back to #3!!! I was almost screaming with frustration at that point... I made it through at the end, but I truly, really hoped there won't be Elemental Workshop IV. Ever. Please.

Quiet Before the Swarm was OK. But I had enough of puzzles at the moment and couldn't appreciate it fully. Maybe I shouldn't have done it right after the Elemental Workshop. Too late. Anyway, going through conversations with nine (!) knights was tedious as well as prying information from five of them in the "mind space". Other then that it was quite good and even relaxing. The bridge problem was cool, I am now giving it out to friends in RL :)

But then I went through the Love Story and loved every second of it. What a blast!
My hero in the game summed up the whole experience perfectly in this one phrase:

Can't say it better, can I?

So that's what I did during last two days...

And there is only one question nagging at me: "why? oh why, can't all quests be on the level of Love Story? why does Jagex keeps mixing Elemental Workshops in between?"