Mobilising Armies/Pre-release info
August 2008
Jagex first revealed their development of Mobilising Armies in Future PvP Updates of 15 August 2008<ref>Behind the Scenes - August. Behind the Scenes. Jagex Ltd. 2008-08-15.*</ref>.
| “ | Naturally, we also have other PvP-orientated content, like Stealing Creation (a resource control game where skillers and PKers work together, creating equipment and beating up the opposition) and Mobilising Armies (a real-time strategy game where you use your hard made bows, swords, etc. to equip your own armies in 4-player battles). | ” |
— Future PvP Updates, Behind the Scenes
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October 2008
On 1 October 2008, during the October 2008 update, Jagex released more information about this upcoming PvP activity, as well a screenshot<ref>Mod Mark. Behind the Scenes - October. Behind the Scenes. Jagex Ltd. 2008-10-01.*</ref>.
| “ | Ever fancied assaulting a castle with your very own army? You will be able to hire a mercenary force to battle against three other players, complete set objectives and earn rewards. Mobilising Armies will be a fast paced tactical activity allowing you to control your very own RuneScape army with troops made up of humans and other races. There will also be some special effects including dive bombing gnomes and giant catapults. Will you be up to the challenge? | ” |
— Mod Mark
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November 2008
In the November 2008 update of 3 November 2008, Jagex confirmed their intention to release the activity in December, and provided another screenshot of the activity in action<ref>Mod Mark. Behind the Scenes - November. Behind the Scenes. Jagex Ltd. 2008-11-03.*</ref>.
| “ | With any tactical game you need to spend a long time fine-tuning its different aspects to try to make it as fair, balanced and fun as possible. Mobilising Armies, our headline update for December, is no different and we have been working hard to tweak the key scenarios for this: Conflict, Siege, Hoard and Rescue. We'll have more on this update in next month's Behind the Scenes but in the meantime we have another screenshot for you. | ” |
— Mod Mark
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December 2008
In the December 2008 update on 1 December, Mod Mark noted that the release of the activity would be delayed until 2009<ref>Mod Mark. Behind the Scenes - December. Behind the Scenes. Jagex Ltd. 2008-12-01.*</ref>.
| “ | We've reported before that we planned to release Mobilising Armies, our new tactical activity, in December. We’ve found that although we could release it, we really want to take our time to make this the best update we can, so we made the difficult choice to hold onto it until next year. We’ve never ever tried to release a game like this before, and we want to make sure we get it right. So, you’ll have to wait a little longer for your gnomic glider bombers, pigeon messengers, dragons’ hoards and catapult attacks. | ” |
— Mod Mark
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January 2009
On the RuneScape Forums in January 2009, Mod Mark said that Jagex was still developing this activity to remove any "teething problems", and "focusing on ensuring updates are high quality, which sometimes means you will have to wait longer".
| “ | Hi,
We’ve noticed that many of you have been asking questions about Mobilising Armies, the strategic activity we mentioned last year. Firstly – don’t worry! We are still building this update: we’ve not forgotten about it. We really are working hard to ensure that it will be as good as it can be. Don’t forget, we have never tried to do anything like this within RuneScape, so we’re trying to make sure that there won’t be any of the teething problems you might expect from something as different as Mobilising Armies. As you know, we’re focusing on ensuring updates are high quality, which sometimes means you will have to wait longer. We will give you more information about Mobilising Armies next month in the Behind-the-Scenes article. Please note that this does NOT mean we will be launching it next month, only talking about it. |
” |
— Mod Mark, Jagex Moderator
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February 2009
The status of Mobilising Armies was once again updated by Jagex in February's Behind The Scenes. Behind the Scenes, February 2009<ref>Mod Mark. Behind the Scenes - February. Behind the Scenes. Jagex Ltd. 2009-02-02.*</ref>.
| “ | Work continues on this tactical activity, and we’ve been busily adding new features and continuously developing the game engine to support this new content. Recent additions include:
As we have said before, this activity is different from anything ever seen before in RuneScape. The more we test and play through the content, the more features we know we need to add to make the game work the way we want it to. This means that we’ve not been able to launch it as early in the year as we had initially hoped, but we will give you more news as soon as it is available. |
” |
April 2009
On 21 April 2009, Jagex Moderator Mod Maz wrote on the RuneScape Forums that the activity developers were "nearly ready to hand over to the QA [Quality Assurance] team".
| “ | Dear Players,
I’d just like to take some time to inform you a little about one of the projects I’m working on – Mobilising Armies. Hence why I'm posting this on a Mobilising Armies thread! :D I’ve been working on this project for some time now, right from the very first concepts with Mod Tim who is leading the project. The activity has evolved hugely since our original release plans, partly because the Game Engine team came up with some really useful new functionality that made the game play much smoother and less awkward and partly because of some good feedback and suggestions we had for new mechanics. That being said, we still have to work within the constraints of the RuneScape Engine, which is not going to lead to mechanics in RTS games where you get to do things like border selecting troops and have thousands of them on screen at a time. We have focused very much on the battle tactics element (RTT) and this makes MA into a game involving some interesting mechanics, and we’re quite excited to see how players choose to interact and which tactics turn out to be the popular ones. At the moment we’re nearly ready to hand over to the QA team so they can test it and when it completes that phase, I hope you enjoy playing it as much as we have! |
” |
— Mod Maz, Queen of the Squirrel Armies
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June 2009
In the Mobilising Armies blog, released on 26 June 2009, Andrew Gower said that this activity has been so long in the making because it is "something quite experimental, which is very different to anything we’ve done before", and that it will NOT be "the most epic, mammoth, huge, polished piece of content you’ve ever seen". He also said that it would be released "in the next few weeks"<ref>Andrew Gower. "Mobilising Armies". 26 June 2009. Developers' Blogs. *</ref>.
July 2009
On 8 July the layout of the official website of RuneScape has changed in to Mobilising Armies because it got released.
The Mobilising Armies update brought on many more updates, including the in-game toolbar and also added notes.
Within the first three hours of release, three of the four game modes went offline (Siege, Hoard, and Rescue) leaving Conflict the only game mode online. This was due to an issue with Siege in which players were unable to join the game, so it was temporarily shut down. They came back online on 10 July 2009.