MRC LONGWY

While you'll want to be a mid-level Runescape manhood to enter Menaphos, once inside you'll get a remarkably open town, with only a couple of areas RuneScape gold sealed off till you're farther into the expansion's pursuit series. Below the city there's a procedurally-generated skilling dungeon along with a huge Slayer dungeon, the former offering a new and limitless area for non-combat art boosting, while the latter serves as a high-level Slayer dungeon with critters beginning at combat level 101.

Obviously, that depends on what level you're as you go into the expansion and how fully you want to explore beyond the four chief quests and 21 degree increase to the Slayer ability. That is an unparalleled quantity of content for a single Runescape upgrade, also Jagex's intention to release another expansion of this size in September and December shows this is not a one-off gesture; it's a new way of playing Runescape.

"It's a huge change for us and our existing player base in terms of how we provide content," says lead designer David Osborne. "We are utilized to drip-feeding great, additive pieces of content each week, but that is about bringing all of that together to provide players something they can really immerse themselves in - a long-form narrative, a lot of skilling and combat content, a growth to a level cap - all of the things you would want or expect in a growth "

"It is us moving to the box set mentality," explains product owner Joseph Redstall,"we did all these polls last year and we spoke about the cadence of upgrades and it was working fine for us. We could do sizeable chunks of articles every 2 weeks, but we can not do as much as this."

Menaphos can also be an opportunity to bring prospective players to the fold with a more packed chunk of content. A new map, new quests, new lootnew systems, and an elongated skill cap - all under one release date. Menaphos is all about creating a critical mass of stuff for existing, lapsed, buy RS gold and fresh gamers to gravitate towards, which could make the decision easier for those who are on the fence regarding whether or when to dive in.