What could’ve been: The latest OSRS Warding Poll Results
It’s always uplifting to see gaming communities have a say in their games’ content—especially in MMOs. The latest instance of that is in Old School RuneScape, where mods held a poll to decide whether or not to include warding in the game. So, which one won?
Read on to find exactly how the poll went down.
Table of Contents
The Democratic History of Old School RuneScape
Before anything else, here’s a short history lesson: Did you know that Old School RuneScape owes its existence to a poll? It all started with the declining player base due to the unpopularity of then-recent updates. The Jagex CEO put up a poll for the creation of a brand-new RuneScape server dedicated only to older content. Considering we’ve had OSRS for many years now, we know which side won!
Indeed, player base involvement is a part of the very foundation of OSRS. And many years since the poll that built the server was launched, lots of subsequent polls that helped the course of OSRS. The latest one, however, failed to add the newly proposed skill to the game, as the votes for Yes had to reach 75%. Unfortunately, the number only reached 66% – close but no cigar, so no warding for everyone. This is despite the fact that the poll has been the most voted one in all of OSRS history.
Had the pro-warding populace won, the game would’ve had its first-ever new skill–and a rather useful and creative one at that! The poll for Warding, however, wasn’t the first-ever poll for a skill to be added in the game. Older ones include Artisan, which only managed to garner 56.6% of votes, and Sailing, whose Yes votes only reached 68%.
Worthy But Unelected: Warding as a Skill
As a skill, Warding’s aim is to create magical robes and armor, plus lots of other magical items through the use of fabrics and vis. It works this way:
- First off, there has to be Wards. However, they can only be drawn through vis: waxy substances needed to draw wards where magical items are created. Think of it this way: if anvil is to armor, then wards are to magical equipment. They are created by dissolving items or casting elemental spells from the standard spellbook at specific runecrafting altars.
- To channel vis through wards, a channeling lamp is needed. The vis will be channeled into materials through wards.
- For Warding, the materials needed are silk. Suffice to say, the higher the material quality, the higher the skilling level is needed.
Variation of the Magical Trade
The items that Warding creates give a significant amount of Magic, with the highest being Soulbark Armor, granting up to 47 Magic Attack bonus when the full set is worn, as well as superb defense from all sorts of physical and magical attacks.
Aside from robes and other forms of magical armor, Warding can also create the following items:
- Rings – combat rings and skilling rings. The latter gives you chances to receive double of a particular item associated with a particular skill.
- Runecrafting Pouches
- Elemental tome pages – created with papyrus and specific elemental vis (earth, fire, water, air)
- Incantations – ammunition-slot items that grant a small magic bonus. Their creation requires the proper talisman and specific vis.
- Anti-poison lamp
- Scroll of Redirection
With so many items that warding can create, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a lot of players feel like this would’ve been a very helpful addition. If it only made it, that is. In fact, in light of such a missed opportunity, there has already been clamor among players asking Jagex to lower the necessary percentage of Yes votes from 75%.
There is no doubt that Warding would’ve been a good skill. Unfortunately, it simply isn’t the skill’s time. Hopefully, a more relevant skill gets polled in the future and gets enough votes to get into the game. That or polling rules get changed, making the hoops needed by would-be OSRS additions to jump through a lot fewer.
