Bonus XP Weekend/March 2010

The bonus XP weekend is an upcoming event, starting 12:00PM GMT Friday, 12 March 2010 and lasting until 12:00PM GMT Monday, 15 March 2010. During this event, players will gain extra experience for the first ten hours of their personal gameplay time. This event is members only.

Mechanics


When players initially log in on the weekend, they will gain approximately 2.7 times the usual rate for all "normal" training activities. While logged in, a timer will be running over the time the player is logged into the game. The bonus will decrease over time to a minimum of 1.1 times the usual rate.

The experience rate will be shown in-game over the course of the weekend. Players will have access to an interface showing a running total of the extra experience they've earned, over what they would have normally earned, as well as the amount of time they have been logged in. The bonus XP rate will NOT decrease when the player is not logged into the game.

Bonus
The XP multiplier will initially be 2.7x, but will decrease to 1.1x over 10 hours of gameplay. Any experience gained after 10 hours will have a multiplier of 1.1.

The formula is: $$(x-10)^2/7.5+1.1$$ for x<10 and where x is the number of hours played.

Limitations
The bonus XP rate will not affect XP gained from quest rewards, XP items (such as genie lamps), or XP gained on a point by point basis (such as Penguin Points). Furthermore, the effect of Sacred Clay items, Penance horns, and brawling gloves will not stack with the bonus XP rate. Those items can be used without any degradation or potential decrease.

Gilded altars will not give their extra experience per bone during the weekend. Since gilded altars normally give +350% experience per bone, on the Bonus XP weekend, prayer will actually be fewer experience per hour than normal. Also, Ectofuntus, which gives 288 experience per bone, will also be excluded from the Bonus XP weekend.

Controversy
Having the bonus experience weekend has been extremely controversial.

Various objections to the weekend include:


 * Obtaining extra experience without having to actually work for it.
 * Devaluing past achievements by offering faster experience.
 * Players who have large amounts of summoning charms banked can gain huge amounts of extra experience; the issue here is that charms must be gathered for 15+ hours to support 1 hour of making pouches, but on the bonus experience weekend players can just use the bonus experience on the pouch making, effectively extending the bonus experience to a very large amount of playing time. Also, some players may have used large amounts of charms before the weekend was announced, placing them at a disadvantage.
 * Ability of players to save huge amounts of money by getting extra free experience in buyable skills such as herblore. This places players who choose to train nonbuyable skills during the weekend at a disadvantage because they will not save any money, only time.
 * Some players not being able to log in on this specific weekend.
 * Since the bonus experience never goes away but instead stays at 1.1 times after 10 hours, players are encouraged to play long hours, sleeping less, to make the most of the 1.1 times bonus.
 * Training prayer using a gilded altar will give less experience during the bonus weekend.
 * The weekend is sometimes seen as a cheap trick to gain additional members.
 * Economic effects, including the buyouts of skilling supplies such as planks and herbs, decreasing their availability to players. If Jagex did more of these weekends, the prices of these items would permanently increase, as players would buy them for inflated prices in anticipation for further bonus XP weekends.

Supporters of the weekend claim that everyone has an equal opportunity to gain the extra experience and no one is hurt by having the bonus experience. Also, supporters sometimes claim that double experience is already available with items such as the Stealing Creation tools and Master horn However, it takes time to get these items whereas the bonus xp weekend would grant experience to players with no investment.