Good times

[Mike]

To our most beloved community

As another year is nearing its end, the time has come to look at what's ahead of us while reflecting on everything that has happened in the past year. It's a very long read, so get comfy, grab a drink and enjoy.

First of all, I'd like to make a few important announcements!

Just now I have released the Christmas event! You can start this event by talking to the Elf Tracker in Varrock. Along with this event is also the addition of the werewolf agility course as a third (safe) location to train your agility! To go there, simply teleport to Canifis and head to the South-East.

Both the event and the werewolf agility course were made by Vcom. I did the in-game testing, debugging and lots of improvements, but it's still mostly his work. Considering I'm quite content with his work, and considering both the halloween and christmas events he made were done quite well (despite Vcom not being able to debug them himself), I have decided to officially declare him our new Trial Developer!
The title does not come with any powers, so rank-wise, he still counts as a regular player, which is unusual but not really a problem. We will soon be setting up an environment for him in which he can test his own code, so he can develop and debug new updates mostly on his own.
I know not everyone is a big fan of Vcom, but nobody can deny that he's doing good work for PkHonor and helping a great deal towards its further improvement. For this, he has our thanks.

But I have even better news. As some of you may have noticed, during the past week we have had no less than 30% more players online and 30% more newly created accounts than the weeks before. As far as player count is concerned, we're currently doing better than we did at any time in the past 15 months! PkHonor is once again on the rise, and it's about to get a whole lot better.

I'm sure most of you know about RuneLocus, one of the biggest RSPS toplists in the world (http://www.runelocus.com/top-rsps-list/ ). With Ikov closing down, we managed to purchase the #1 advertisement spot (above the current #1). Our ad should come online any moment - hopefully this week, depending whether the owner is on holiday or not.
Along with our relatively high ranking on most other toplists and the advertisement we have on some sites, you can expect a huge increase in players within the next days, weeks and months!


Now, let's take a look at what 2016 has in store for us. A few of these things had already been planned for the past year, but had been replaced in favor of other content we deemed more necessary, more worth the effort or simply looked like they were things the players wanted more. Also keep in mind this list is not final and may change depending on the circumstances or the preferences of ourselves and the community.
Planned for the next weeks and months:
> Highscores for bosses and the wilderness, where the players with most kills in the past week are listed. These highscores will be accessible in-game at boss entrances and in edgeville
> Ability for ironman mode players to revert their account to a regular player (with necessary restrictions)
> Rebalancing of magic combat with community input and feedback
> 5 new bosses (and probably more over time), introducing new items and boss pets
> Regular pets, with smaller and grown versions, along with one or two quests
> Addition of ancient effigies
> Some small improvements on the skilling center, as well as making it the default spawn point for new players
> Trade and duel anti-scam measures, highly technical but should be possible
> Improved pathing, very technical, a really tough nut to crack, will require a lot of effort (and lots of trial and error)

Some other things we have in mind (but needs to be approved by the community first):
> A limited version of summoning, something which all players can agree to. We'll start with summoning features that are mostly for convenience purposes rather than giving someone an advantage. Of course, our players still need to agree on whatever we'll be working out before we can release it. I know opinions are highly divided on Summoning and we keep that into account.
> Improved pest control, making it more challenging (but still possible to rush in groups)
> Complete rework of the zombie minigame, to make it more diverse and more rewarding
> Improvement of the agility courses to make them look better while being an actual challenge (but also more rewarding at the same time)



However, I also want to take the time to reflect on the past year. We've had a few minor bumps along the road, but overall, we have the feeling that a lot of great things have happened and we've made major progress.

At the beginning of the year, we hired Billy as our new staff manager, whom Rapsey and myself have the impression that he's doing a terrific job. He may not always seem like the most approachable person, but he's doing his job the best he can and we noticed there have been far fewer complaints about our staff team than in the past. There's always room for improvement, but we do our best to come up with ways to make sure punishment are handed out fair while still allowing for the necessary amount of leniency. It's just about finding the right balance, which can take a lot of time. We're getting there.

Thanks to Dylan his efforts, we had also managed to add Glacors and Bounty Hunter earlier this year. He's also done a lot of improvements behind the scenes and prepared content that will be released next year (such as new bosses and items). He's been very busy with internship and work, but despite everything he's still managed to do a lot of good work for PkHonor.

I also want to take the opportunity to thank our staff team, whose performance this year has been truly outstanding. I'd like to give an honorary mention to Slashy, our longest standing admin on PkHonor who has resigned recently. He will be missed, but we remain confident that our current staff team will keep doing a great job even without him. Ryan has been doing a great job taking over most of the responsibilities, and he does so very well. I trust Mitchel will also continue to keep up his great work, especially with his recent promotion.

Though it's not just our staff team which has been outstanding. I cannot remember a time when this community was more understanding, respectful and patient than they have been in the past months. For this, I want to give you our most heartfelt thanks. If we all keep going in the direction we've been going recently, we won't just be 'one of the best and greatest RSPS in the world'. We might just become the greatest, a lot of which is thanks to the way everyone has been behaving recently. You may say PkHonor is doing better because of updates and the removal of some rotten apples (farewell Sean), but a whole lot of the credit goes to yourself and the way you've been acting. Keep it up!

I also want to remind everyone that PkHonor would have never existed without the support of our donators. A good server isn't cheap and proper DDoS protection neither. We could have never offered our current uptime and overall stability without the amounts they donate every month. And of course, we also like a beer from time to time. Cheers!


Lastly, let's take a look at some of the biggest improvements we've made this year. We plan on spending at least as much time on content next year as we did last year, and since we don't have many big updates planned, you can expect more content than you could ever get tired of.
Some of the biggest and most important updates from last year:
> Improved voting system with many more rewards and the addition of 8 more toplists
> Automated in-game account recovery through the forums
> Addition of Glacors
> Release of Bounty Hunter in the wilderness
> Addition of 28 different events, as well as an automated system to schedule weekly events
> Ironman mode with seperate boss rooms and risky barrows
> New highscores with separate highscores for ironman
> Use of SSL certificates to encrypt all traffic through our site and forums. Not just good for extra security but also for our page ranking in search engines.
> Boss Pets for every boss
> Several big changes and improvements in regards to combat and weapon switching, as well as fixing several special attacks on weapons
> Addition of Revenants in the wilderness, along with the Salve and Salve(e) amulet
> A new, customized skilling center
> Many, many bugfixes and small improvements and additions

[Hegemon lock]

viewtopic.php?f=47&t=52112&p=493430#p493430 for Christmas event guide!

[Jonas]

Hyppeee!!!

Congratulations Vcom!!

Great job with the advertisiting, can't wait to greet new players with a very warm welcome. I didn't even realise how many great updates we've got this year and how many good people joined us. I also thought that Dylan was a goner, but now that thought is gone, great work Dylan! I also can't wait for the new updates next year, hopefully Vcom will make the updates much easier.

[B0rnt0b3pk]

Merry christmas and happy new year to all of PkHonor members, from programmers to non donators.

[Ryan]

Merry christmas and happy new year to all of PkHonor members, from programmers to non donators.

[Babe]

can't wait for the new bosses!
Very scared about the, making PC challenging, and the addition of summoning skill...

[Brant]

such joy, gratz andres

[Mike]

can't wait for the new bosses!
Very scared about the, making PC challenging, and the addition of summoning skill...

No worries. We never release any content without the approval of the majority of the community, and I think I can safely say we haven't added any new features (in the past few years) that people disagree with. Amirite?

[Jousi]

Feels kind of weird every time a year has passed. Now that I'm strongly reminded of this here in-game, my main thoughts are:

What will be in 2016? Will there be any major changes to things old and safe?

While these questions are yet to be answered, one's curiosity has been sparked to the full.

Another year for me playing this magnificent server and it still has its trademark charm to it. I'm so grateful to be a part of this community.

Mike thanked people and now I'm going to do the same.

A huge thank-you to our programmer team; you've been outstanding throughout the year.

A huge thank-you to our Staff team for doing their job and putting up with players and their mood swings.

And finally, a huge thank-you to the whole community of this game; some familiar names are always there and new faces have joined our ranks, enriching PKH culture.



We are the greatest of them all.

[Vactor]

Is it possible to add Dungeoneering Skill ingame Next time?