Where is Mod Jack?

communication with the community is a total dumpster fire

It'd be easier if everyone congregated in one space, but there's no accounting for taste these days so we just have to be everywhere! I make a concerted effort to include Reddit, Discord and Twitter in any communication we plan to do with players as that's where the majority of our players congregate and I'd rather hit all three than, say, stick to Twitter and force everyone to make an account over there to participate.

As for other Jmods (namely ones whose jobs don't ask them to be actively communicating with the community, but rather do so of their own volition and because they want to hear from players and get opinions, feedback and have constructive conversations) - they stick to platforms they feel particularly comfortable with.

That's entirely their own choice, and I'm always happy to support members of the team looking to jump onto new platforms and have conversations (I remember being in a call with Mod Sponge for the Reddit AMA when we changed FSOA, for example!). This also extends to community spaces, as well! Jmods aren't just in official channels, we're in community discords, Twitch chats, fan groups, we're everywhere! Lots of conversations out there to be had - as long as they're productive and constructive.

exodus of JMods

Two of the team had finished their work on their projects and have taken secondments (if memory serves, no more than 12 months) to help the OldSchool team with their work developing the new skill. As you can imagine, it's a totally new frontier for that team, and they need all the help they can get, and two of our very kind and generous JMods were able to lend their expertise to get them closer to their vision and the finish line.

We've got massive changes to the entirety of the Combat triangle reaching the final stages of refinement before they go live into the game in the coming few weeks, we've just had a Necromancy update with new jewellery, NPCs, a quest, a Pet, dyable T95 TFN gear, and we've got a very cool update lined up after the combat changes that I'm dying to talk about.

Hope you have a better day, 'Scaper.

We're JMods, yes, but we're human beings too! We have families, hobbies and personal lives. Some days are tough and you just want to unwind on the sofa with a good cuppa tea, a cat and a 2 hour long youtube documentary about speedrunning.

Mod Jack's still very much active within the Discord when he can be, but he's still working hard on his responsibilities. It's worth noting that as Lead Designer, he's responsible for overseeing and supporting a lot of the really cool stuff that's going to be getting into players' hands in the future, but he's not solely responsible for the direction of RuneScape. It's a collective effort from the Leadership Team who each manage separate aspects of the project, including Mod Keeper and Mod Bam.

Mod Jack, however, goes above and beyond his role's requirements (often I catch him burning the midnight oil chatting in the Official Discord's lore section far outside of work hours!) to engage with the community because of a deep-rooted, genuine care for player voice which is at the heart of what we do here.

It's, unfortunately, a double-edged sword - on the one hand, Mod Jack gets to engage with players, get feedback, argue about Star Wars, or whatever may come up in conversations. On the other, that high level of visibility does mean that often, people conflate his visibility with having absolute authority on all things RuneScape, which isn't the case. He's part of the team, and has a lot of agency over our vision and aims, but isn't singularly at the epicenter of it all.

That confusion has often led to points he's made, examples he's given, or hypotheticals he has posed (which is absolutely par for the course in his role, asking those questions is crucial to design) have been held up as evidence or as a "gotcha!" moment. That would, understandably, give anyone pause when wanting to discuss design ideas, broach new topics or talk broadly about where we are.

Mod Keeper recently spoke about our plans for 2024 and things we want to pitch to you as we work on our upcoming March and April updates so while we're working on that, things might be a little quieter, but we're still watching and listening!

And, of course, as others in this thread have rightly noted - we're human beings! Mod Jack has a family and hobbies outside of work (beyond arguing in the Lore section of the Discord, apparently) so sometimes there might be quieter periods with less communication, but the care is absolutely still there. Mod Jack and I spoke about this recently, and I can absolutely assure you he's keen to chat with the community about all things design, but we want to make sure that, as a whole team, we can have the bigger conversations first, before we can start to find that rhythm of smaller, more chatty conversations again. Hope this helps!

Sorry, this turned in to an essay very fast.

Mod Abe is the other.

Well, not that kind. Depends on the player, I suppose! To Woodcutting mains, Woodcutters' Grove was a major update. To clue chasers, more things to use dyes on is always a major update. To PvMers, the upcoming Combat update will be a major update. Who knows? The future is a mystery to us all.