Q&A Summary 10/02/2022

What made you select Land of the Goblins to be the next questline to be brought to the game?

It was mainly because of us having that existing version of it. Land of the Goblins, in particular, was a popular quest. It was, to a certain extent, an experiment.

We’ve done lots of different things with quests in Old School. We’ve done brand new quests, we’ve done quests that continue existing storylines but which have taken a different direction to RuneScape, but we’ve never backported a quest before, so we wanted to try that and see what the response would be.

When we first announced it in December, the response was really positive, so we decided to move forward with it.

With Land of the Goblins continuing the Dorgeshuun questline, will we be seeing the Chosen Commander after this or something completely new?

It kind of follows on from that last one a bit. Land of the Goblins was the first time porting something over, so now we sort of seeing what people think. What do people in the chat think?

Would people rather see Chosen Commander, or would people rather see us take the storyline in a new direction?

The thing for us on our end is that we have so many different storylines in the game but because there’s so many that even if we like tripled the output at which we made quests, we’re still talking years upon years to finish even half of them, and being able to backport content into Old School might allow us to finish a few of those earlier. Of course, the downside to some players might be that it’s something they’ve seen before, so it’s weighing that up and seeing what people think.

Chosen Commander was a brilliant quest, and there are some quests from the 2008 to 2011 era which I would not ever want to touch; there are some quests that just don’t want to be backported, they don’t even want to be mentioned, but I’m sure everyone in the chat knows exactly which pillar crushing, dungeoneering style, quest I’m on about.

Still, some like Chosen Commander could potentially work really well in Old School with a few tweaks as we did with Land of the Goblins, polish them up a bit. So I guess that was a really long way of me saying that I don’t have an answer to that question; it’s kind of up to the players and what they’d prefer.

Would love to see more quests & lore revolving around the goblins. Can we expect any more in 2022?

There aren’t any more plans to do anything with goblins in 2022. As for how soon they reappear again, that probably depends on the answer to the previous question.

Let’s make it very clear; I don’t want to make any commitments here on stream, then go on Reddit later to read ‘oh, Mod Ed promised this’. Obviously, if we were to move forward with a backport of Chosen Commander as the finale of the Dorgeshuun questline, we’d be able to do that considerably faster than if we were to build something from scratch.

If that was the direction we chose to go in, then we could quite possibly be looking at a goblin finale Chosen Commander in 2023, but if we wanted to make something new, then obviously, they would have to start getting weighed up against all the other questlines because, as mentioned, there are a lot of them. Would people prefer the Dorgeshuun finale to a Fairytale finale, for example? Another question without a proper answer to it yet, but there are some fun discussions to be had here, I think.

Mod Sarnie

Yeah, for Originalprince asking in the chat, I don’t think the Sheep Shearer questline is going to continue anytime soon; I’m just going to put that out there,

Mod Ed

I’ll have you know that last year I actually had a pitch for not a full quest but for part of another quest, which I’m not going to go into details on because that project ended up getting cancelled awkwardly, but it did involve penguins and sheep shearing so never say never. Maybe there’s a possibility that Sheep Shearer II could still happen!

Has the team considered adding a raid or Skilling activity to Dorgesh-Kaan to revitalise the city, possibly as part of the eventual finale to the Dorgeshuun storyline?

Mod EdI don’t know about something as big as a raid, but I think we definitely should, regardless of whether we do our own unique take on the Dorgeshuun finale or if we backport Chosen Commander.

I think whichever one we go with, we absolutely should use it as an opportunity to add more content to Dorgesh-Kaan. It’s such a beautiful place, and then you just never go there.

Mod Kieren

Yeah, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Even without the new quest, it’s like, you get to the city, and there’s basically little reason ever to go back right as soon as you unlock it from the existing quest.

So I think even now, we could probably add something there, and even more so something that’s unlocked with a finale quest as well. I’d certainly love suggestions, and there are lots of suggestions about the lamp fixing activity. But I’d certainly still like something a little bit more ambitious than fixing the lamps around the city as well.

Mod Sarnie

It’s my personal favourite storyline from Old School, and I remember back in the day – like proper, proper back in the day – just roaming around Dorgesh-Kaan trying to find something to do. Because I loved the city and there was nothing, which is such a shame. So yeah, anything added to that would be amazing.

Mod Tide

What about an expansion to the train system? You could have all these tunnels that you have to go and empty out. They could have all these resources in there, maybe some monsters or something you have to fight.

Mod Errol

Yeah, that would be fun. You have to fight your way through the train.

Mod Sarnie

Oh, oh. I like that. I like that idea a lot. Yeah, okay, okay.

Mod Errol

You can steal it.

What was your favourite part of working on this questline?

This is a bit different with it being a direct port over. There wasn’t as much opportunity for creativity. But it’s just some of the different type aspects to it that were quite fun with this one. I probably had the most fun with the sneaky inclusion of an extra music track that I don’t think players are expecting. We said it would be a port of the original quest with a few enhancements, but we also used it as an opportunity to bring in one of the music tracks from Chosen Commander at the end. That was really fun to include.

Mod Sarnie

Yeah, it just it slaps, the new track, I’m not gonna lie.

Mod Tide

It’s a really nice sounding track!

Are there any plans for the goblins located on the Eastern Shore of the River Lum to eventually be “relocated” in a future expansion?

Is this is a reference to something, or is this just a completely arbitrary request for the goblins to be moved?

Mod Ed

I think it’s just an arbitrary request, but that’s sacred; like the goblins in Lumbridge, they have no reason to be there…

Mod Errol

They have!

Mod Ed

It’s absolutely terrible. Someone should really chat to the Duke about why they’re all still there and why he’s done nothing about it! But… you can’t take the goblins away.

Mod Errol

Yeah, if we do that, how will people pay the toll for Al Kharid? We can’t all go off rescuing princes to get a discount.

Mod Kieren

Yeah, the whole economy of Al Kharid would be ruined.

Mod Sarnie

Just see it go all downhill, the gate’s permanently closed. You can’t enter the desert ever again.

Mod Errol

Yeah, you have to walk around now.

Mod Tide

Just through the water, you know. They’ve been there all that time, and it makes you think what else could they have done there?

Mod Ed

There is a quest idea there, where the player works for the Duke to drive the goblins out, and it completely destroys the economies of both Lumbridge and Al Kharid so they actually have to invite the goblins back again.

Mod Sarnie

Yeah, let’s do it all right. Add it! Add it to the 2023 roadmap.

During Death to the Dorgeshuun, we show Zanik around Lumbridge. Can we get some new dialogue for the NPC’s that were added since Death to the Dorgeshuun? It’d be nice if Zanik could learn about Ironmen and have some surface-beer.

It’s just like a request for a date with Zanik?

Mod Errol

A date where the whole of Lumbridge is invited.

Mod Ed

I guess it probably would be nice to go back and add some dialogue. This is a complete tangent and potentially a risky take, especially based on what I just said about Lumbridge being sacred, but there are too many NPCs in Lumbridge. There are so many tutors and stuff that don’t actually teach you anything about the game. Can we just can we delete some of them?

Mod Errol

Set the Goblins on them!

Mod Ed

Yeah, we can replace them with more goblins, more room for goblins!

Mod Sarnie

I mean, I feel like there’s a certain NPC that a lot of people, including a couple of J-Mods, would like to see got rid of.

Mod Ed

We polled removing him; we didn’t poll killing him, just saying, it could be that maybe in the quest where the goblins are driven out of Lumbridge, there might be a few casualties.

Mod Errol

Maybe that’s the price for them coming back.

Mod Sarnie

Poll 77 maybe?

Dorgesh-Kaan and Keldagrim have started having important political and economic ties to each other. When the Red Axe continues to rise, and as Bandos continues to run amok, can we see how this affects that intergovernmental relationship?

I was not expecting that question; I was “really quick, make up an answer”.

Mod Errol

I guess part of me hopes they’re gonna become closer dealing with their separate issues, but then again, I love complex fantasy politics, so hopefully not. I guess you’ve already seen a bit of conflict there with the dwarven engineer telling the Dorgeshuun they need to be more efficient or whatnot. I can see there being a little bit of a culture clash.

Mod Ed

It could be a fun spin-off quest, even if it’s not included in the finale. Maybe a spin-off quest involving driving goblins out of Lumbridge… have I killed that one yet? One of two things is going to happen by the end of this stream; either we’re going to go away, and we’re going to make that quest straight away, or we are never going to be able to talk about goblins ever again.

Mod Tide

We’re digging a new train tunnel, and accidentally you know those goblins come.

Mod Sarnie

Maybe that’s the way we get a goblin league going, you know, maybe they fall into a pit.

Mod Errol

Into the goblin dimension!

Is the higher quality standard for quests the driving reason behind only releasing 1-2 a year?

That’s a hard question; that’s a complicated question. There are multiple reasons why the number of quests has gone down per year, and yes, this is definitely one of them. We want to make sure that all quests we add to old school are of high quality and actually have a place in-game. We don’t want to do any more rat-catchers. And when we have messed up in the past, see Night at the Theatre, we’ve immediately gone in to rework it to make sure that these quests are of a high standard because otherwise what’s the point of it even existing, so it’s definitely part of it, but, it’s definitely not the only reason.

In general, quests do take longer to develop now, even when you put the quality aside. The game is much bigger now; there are a lot more systems to plug into and dodge around. I know some people on Reddit, and in the Twitch chat are probably already saying ‘lots of spaghetti to untangle’ and it is the unfortunate reality of it.

That is one aspect. Another thing is that again, quality aside, our quests, in general, are bigger now in Old School. Back in 2005 to 2007, a lot of quests they were releasing were small quests. I’m going to pre-empt the question that’s probably already appearing in chat as well, “oh, why not just add more small quests?”, which we absolutely could, but the thing about those small quests they released back then was that they were kicking off storylines.

Making a quest like Plague City is not a very big undertaking but at that point, you’re then committing to multiple sequels to it and we’re now at the point where all these storylines have had their small quests and they’ve now got a point where they need something bigger because the questline needs to grow, the quests need to get more serious, more boss fights, more puzzle stuff, because otherwise there’s no progression of a storyline if the gameplay isn’t progressing as well.

We need to make the quests bigger, but we definitely could and probably should try to do a few more small quests. Hopefully, people will see that this year. Next month we’ve got the Temple of the Eye quest coming out alongside Guardians of the Rift, and that’s a bit of a smaller quest than some of the ones we’ve done recently.

So yeah, quite a few different reasons. That is definitely part of it. One thing I will say, because I’ve seen it a lot on Reddit recently, it’s not because of polls; it’s not because we have to poll them. All of the quests that we poll they’re super popular. They pass with 90 plus percent. Polling is not a barrier to releasing more quests, so you tinfoil-hat-boys on Reddit, you can calm down! I promise it’s not that; it’s various other reasons. So, yes, we want to do more, we’ll probably realistically never be able to do the amount but were getting done back in 2005 sort of time, but I definitely want to start seeing us do more than like two or three, and I think this year we are already gonna see a few more.

Mod Sarnie

I hope so too because I love quests, I love them so much, and the quality of them has been amazing – especially something like A Kingdom Divided last year was so good.

Have you thought about merging quest lines together? Right now it seems like the number of quests released per year is very minimal compared to how much there is to continue, and merging quest lines would help on both fronts. What are your opinions on this?

It’s kind of connected to what we’re also talking about earlier about backporting and stuff. Again going back to what I said before, even if we double the number of quests we release it’s still going to take years to finish off every storyline because there are so many of them, and as nice as it would be to be able to make custom bespoke quests for every single one, I think we probably do need to consider ways that we can speed up the rate which we finished storylines off.

Backporting is one of those answers, and this maybe is another. Can quest lines be merged? It’s something I’d be cautious of, I don’t want to feel like we’re compromising on quality just to try and rush these questlines out and get the stories finished faster, and I think back to when the second penguin quest was released, it had some ties to the slug storyline. I seem to recall it having a bit of a mixed reception of trying to tie these two storylines together even though the quest itself was quite popular, so it’s something to be mindful of.

It’s a possible solution, and in some cases, it might work really well, and I guess going back to the other question it was mentioned earlier, the goblins and dwarves already have some connections; maybe we can go down that route a bit more, but yeah, definitely a possibility.

Mod Sarnie

You could unite a lot of it under the ham-esque tirade against all monsters, so it’d be an interesting take.

Mod Tide

I was just gonna say it would have to make sense, really; you don’t want to force it.

Mod Sarnie

Yeah, agreed. Quality over quantity, I think, is the best way for this.

Could we have more easy-medium difficulty quests to be part of a questline? Expanding and concluding quest-lines has been cool and all, but I think it would be great if more lower-level quests could be added as a way to build up the lore better. Some of the grandmaster quests in the past just introduce a cast of new characters that could have been introduced in smaller quests, which I think would improve the much-beloved storytelling of RuneScape lore.

Big question. I think we already answered this one, there’s a reason why we’re not doing as many smaller, easy to medium quests, and that’s because the game already has loads of them. They already exist, and to keep continuing the storylines, quests need to get bigger. I still would like to do more, though, I don’t want to spoil anything, but I think that when Temple of the Eye comes out next month, I think players who feel this way might see that… I can’t say anymore because it’ll spoil things, but that is going to be one of those kinds of quests, it’s a standalone quest that also introduces characters that we might want to use again in the future, which will be quite nice.

Mod Sarnie

I mean we got a peek at it today, which was quite interesting to see, so it’s looking good; that’s all I will say, it’s looking good.

Are there any ideas or plans being tossed around for a ‘climax’ of some sort for the overall story? Nothing too huge like a 6th age (unless?), but something that brings the whole of the game together and isn’t part of any existing questline.

I feel for most questions on this stream I’ve dodged around and given half-answers, so, I’ll give a definitive one to this question. No, that’s not something we want to do. It’s a kind of thing that works really well in RuneScape because of the way their storytelling works, but it’s just not something that fits Old School.

The fact that we have so many different storylines is a good thing, not a bad thing, and to just have one climax of all of that would lessen those quite a bit. That’s not to say that there can’t be crossovers, as you know, we’ve already talked quite a bit like characters that are established in one storyline, maybe hopping over and appearing a bit in another one and stuff like that, maybe even storylines potentially combining in some places, but one massive climax quest that ties everything up in a neat bow? It’s just not the kind of thing that would work.

Mod Tide

Instead of doing this, I’d like to just expand on the world and add some more places for the player to go. I know we got all of the southeast and northwest, and it’s not just what’s there; there could be more.

Mod Sarnie

To go on Tide’s point, there are plenty of things that we could do with the world as it is, and beyond that. I think expanding on that is such a better idea than trying to finish the world we currently have, which is, you know, seems a bit silly.

Mod Ed

Just turn off the servers one day; one big quest and when you finish it, everyone gets logged out.

Mod Sarnie

All accounts are banned. Slowly unban them over a couple of years, and they can start popping into this new world.

What are the chances of some quests directly involving some gods, such as Saradomin or Zamorak…? Maybe some rhetoric from Zamorak talking about his fights with Saradomin over the years?

This one’s another definitive “no”. Again it’s just because it’s one of those things that doesn’t really fit the style of a narrative in Old School. It’s something they did in RuneScape, and again it worked really well for them. But I think that makes it all the more reason why we shouldn’t do it. We shouldn’t just follow that same path that they followed.

I think the closest we ever want to go to interacting with gods is the kind of stuff seen in the Song of the Elves, where you get like some little glimpses into maybe what the characters of these individuals are like, but never really the full story. You definitely never get to properly meet them, only see what they’ve left behind. It adds a lot more mystery, and that’s sort of what Old School storytelling is built on – not having all the answers.

I don’t think we will ever actually see Saradomin, Zamorak, or any of the other gods. Apart from maybe brief flashbacks or something like that, but definitely not a player interacting with them.

I’ve heard that the OSRS team has committed to no god-themed quests, which would include goblins and Bandos, the big high war god. Is that true? Can we expect god-themed quests in the future?

So hopefully, yesterday’s update showed that is not the case, and the important distinction between this and the previous question is that content themed around the gods is absolutely fine. In fact, it is integral to pretty much every single quest series in Old School. Every bit of narrative in Old School comes from the gods in some form or other, so god-themed content and god-themed storylines will always have a strong place and we will always be doing them, you just won’t be meeting the gods. So yes, there will definitely be more god themed content; it’s definitely not a ban on that. You just won’t get to meet the gods.

Mod Sarnie

Especially Sheep Shearer, it probably has one of the most important god ties amongst the questlines.

Mod Ed

Don’t spoil that!

Mod Sarnie

Sorry, sorry, I might have said too much.

Mod Ed

That one is top secret.

Early in OSRS’ lifespan, there was talk about adding quests that would explore the backgrounds of iconic RuneScape NPC’s, such as the Sandwich Lady. Is this still being considered? This sounds like a fun way to add some smaller quests.

Was this question actually from Mod Sarnie?

Mod Sarnie

No, definitely not.

Mod Errol

Yeah, it’s a little suspicious.

Mod Sarnie

I didn’t just steal a username from halfway up the sheet and replace my own one with it.

Mod Errol

Sure, sure.

Mod Tide

I think this would be really, really, cool. Think of all the fun little side quests you could add around the world.

Mod Ed

This is something I’d like to do.

Mod Errol

You could look at it for the future Twisted Tales, maybe, quite interesting.

Mod Ed

I guess coming back to the questions asked earlier about smaller quests and stuff, this is a way to do smaller quests rather than trying to kick off more storylines, a few more fun ones like this. We definitely haven’t done enough of those.

Mod Errol

It answers some of the little questions.

Mod Sarnie

Yeah, stray dog quest, maybe? That’s all I want, man; I just want him to be happy.

Does the OSRS team have any plans to release Arposandra (home of the Gnomes) in the near future? Would love to see the Glouphrie quest line continued (Hopefully even meeting Glouphrie) and hopefully Arposandra alongside it!

The near future’s nice and vague, so I can say yes, and I’m not wrong. On a more serious note, not anytime super soon. Interestingly, the other quest that is mostly complete in the 2007 backup alongside Land of the Goblins was Path of – I actually don’t know how you pronounce his name, “glu-free”? Who knows! Path of the Dude, Path of the Gnome thing, dude, whatever, yeah, that one. (Referring to the Path of Glouphrie). So now that we’ve done Land of the Goblins, that is another one that could be ported over, and similar to Land of the Goblins, it would be much faster than making something new.

Flipping back to the question I asked earlier, is that something that people would be interested in? Because if so, that’s something that could come relatively soon. That one would be even quicker to do than backporting something like Chosen Commander, except this is not actually a backport; it’s instead extracting something from the backup and just finishing it off. It wouldn’t even need any major tweaks really beyond just the usual polish and stuff that we’ve done to things, so that could definitely happen soon.

As for when the city comes, who knows and probably could depend on if we decide to backport that or not.

Mod Sarnie

I mean, I’m now reclassing it as ‘the dude’ storyline, officially.

Mod Ed

Path of the Dude.

In relation to the Mahjarrat series, have you thought about how Temple of Ikov and Hazeel Cult will work with an eventual continuation of this series, considering their multiple-choice endings. Will there be a “canon” outcome to each or will the choices impact a theoretical sequel?

Mod EdI don’t know.

Mod Errol

I seem to remember RS3 did it with one canon ending because they had a lot of issues with various branching choices.

Mod Ed

Yeah, they’ve done more sequels to the Mahjarrat stuff than we have. When I say more, we haven’t done any.

It is an issue. They ran into quite a lot of working out what to do with this. There’s a reason why those are the only two quests that work that way. It was a fun experiment back in the very early days.

Branching storylines like multiple choices are very fun to do in games but it’s something that doesn’t really work as well in a game with such long-term storytelling as an MMO has. You can play a game that lasts 10 hours, you can make your multiple-choice decisions, and then you can finish it, come back later and play it again and choose something different. With quests like this one, when did those quests come out? I think 20 years ago? 20 years later, those choices still have an impact.

We will when we come to them, and I don’t know when that will be. We will probably do the same thing that RuneScape has done where regardless of the choice you made, it will still reach the same endpoint, maybe just slightly different dialogue. I appreciate that that’s not the most fun thing in the world because it makes you feel like your choices don’t matter. It does suck a little bit, but unfortunately, it’s the best option compared to the alternatives of having, with Hazeel Cult, for example, such a notable and major character in the Mahjarrat lore just potentially never appearing again.

Mod Sarnie

I mean, you could. I don’t know if it’d be possible you could track once a quest comes out how many players have done each ending, and then the majority wins.

Mod Ed

Letting players decide narrative through popularity is something that a few games have done, and it’s something that RuneScape has done. It’s interesting, but it’s also really scary because there are just so many different considerations and stuff, so I don’t know.

Mod Sarnie

Yeah, I imagine it’s a difficult one if we were gonna do something like that, there would be a lot of planning.

Mod Errol

It’s interesting, though.

Mod Sarnie

Oh yeah, definitely interesting, but lots of planning.

What’s your favourite questline you want to (or are working on secretly) continue on OSRS?

I’ll go around the room we’ll start with you Ed, and then we’ll go to Errol, and then Tide.

Mod Ed

Well, I’m not going to reveal any secrets for a start. I’d go with the Mahjarrat. Vampires are probably my favourite questline but I’ve already had the opportunity to make two quests in that storyline, so at this point, I want to work on something that’s not already been touched in Old School, and I guess when you think about classic RuneScape questing, nothing beats the Mahjarrat.

We just sort of missed them with the Old School back up, they really started to come into it with the massive quests – they had like While Guthix Sleeps and stuff in 2008 onwards. I’d really love to do an Old School take on a lot of that stuff and maybe go back to what we talked about earlier, maybe there are also opportunities to backport a couple of those as well alongside some new stuff, depending on what people fancy.

Mod Errol

So apart from Sheep Shearer II, I’m gonna stick with my earlier answer with the Kourend storyline because it ended on such a massive cliff-hanger, I have to know.

Mod Ed

Who would do that?

Mod Sarnie

I wonder, I wonder, how about you, Tide?

Mod Tide

I’m going to be a bit biased about this one, but I want to see a continuation of the Pirate storyline. I want to see where the pirates might go next, maybe the past of Brother Tranquillity, maybe he’s not who he seems, we don’t know. That’d be something for everyone to find out.

Mod Sarnie

I mean, I’m very biased, like I said at the start, but it’s the goblins for me. I do want to know where the hell the charters that you get from Olaf’s Quest goes to; I want to know that, so that would probably be the other off offbeat one. I wanna explore the seas, let me explore the seas!