You heard it here folks: Runescape's finally decided to play the XP multiplier card for its fellow gamers.

For the weekend of 12th-15th (or something along that weekend), Runescape's opening to members a multiplier time period, open for the entire weekend. The initial hour will award 2.7x XP, which slowly degrades for 10 hours to 1.1x and stays there for the rest of the time. But, its effects will not stack on in-game multipliers, instead working over in priority (though degradables through this measure will not degrade).

Personally, I'm excited and peeved about this event in equal measures. First and foremost, I'm not a member (not until I learn to utilize PayPal with non-credit-card means), so that leaves me out of the picture, but it was implied that future events may include the free population. However, there's also plenty of opportunity for profit, as buyable skills will become hot demands during this time for quick 99s or whatevers; my only problem is to identify a useful, free commodity to hoard and then resell. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to speak your mind on it.

This is indeed a first for Jagex, who has delayed such a system for an incredible amount of time, whereas Wizet/Nexon, Blizzard and many others have long incorporated timed multipliers into their gameplay. Also, multipliers don't stack, so there's none of that 9.45x gilded altar bones. In the race for XP multipliers, Runescape is lagging worse than me after an hour on Runescape (damn computer fatigue for Macs). That's not necessarily a bad thing, however. Although many of Runescape's updates have never been all that popular, from the modified PvPing worlds to the trading limits and so on, they are really to prevent the general population from abusing and/or breaking rules; in truth, it also forced people to actually *gasp!* work for their stuff. I'm very anti-social to start with, so it's not like I trade with every other person I meet (though I do like to strike up conversations with random strangers, so long they don't hunt me down like the pedobear). I like the new PKing system, because I'm one of those people who really can't kill with relative efficiency, so the rewards for nothing is, to me, very good indeed.

Anyway, I was starting to trail off...

These "controlled bonus XP weekends" are an attractive addition to Runescape, bar none of the recent updates. It gives people an incentive to train those tough-to-level skills that elude them simply because of the amount of effort needed. It gives people a boost to their original training schedules/goals. The only true detriment that I can see is the Grand Exchange economy, which will likely become skewed during this time in the mad grab for resources.

But only time will tell if this will recapture Runescape players, or drive another nail into their coffin.