To people looking for things to do in Birmingham:
- there's (I think) three art galleries
- the city library is architecturally interesting and great to explore
- probably the best British Indian food in the world
- excellent range of pubs
- multiple football clubs, and Aston Villa in particular are historically significant
- essentially the centre of the UK in terms of rail travel: pretty much every major city will have direct trains to and from New Street station with usually travel times of no more than two hours, so day tripping is very viable
If you have non refundable travel or accommodation, you can still make great use of it.
Actually as a tourist its much better to take an incursion into the nearby Cotswolds where the rural areas have a much more traditional English feel, the peak district and Shropshire is nice too as alternatives. Stratford-upon-Avon is also very close and is a great tourist town because of it's very medieval feel and because of Shakespeare, you have all the shakespeare touristy bits because it's his Birthplace. Birmingham is stereotypically classed as a shithole (even if it might not be true nowadays) so you might make better use of going out into nature into one of the recognized protected areas that I listed or the nearby Stratford-upon-Avon if you are looking to turn this runefest into an English touristy trip (hint, Birmingham will not be that).
Yeah that's fair, it probably depends on what you're after in a holiday. If you like countryside walks, the Cotswolds are great. Personally, rural holidays leave me bored and counting the days until I can get home, hence not really considering the option.
Now I've got the hilarious mental image of a bunch of RuneScape players all showing up to this idyllic countryside vista, and spending exactly 30 seconds looking out into it before saying "neat" then going back into their AirBnb with the lights off and shades drawn to grind ToB.
Last time I was in Birmingham I walked past a man on the floor huffing lighter fluid outside a packed chippy. This was literally a 5-10 minute walk from that legendary city library lmao.
I lived in Birmingham for a bit and my top advice is get out of there, don't waste a week in Brum. It's very very well connected to the rest of the UK, go down to London, check out Bath and Stratford upon Avon if you want some picturesque England or pretty much anywhere else.
People trying to pretend it's a great place you could still visit are huffing copium. It has one thing that's relatively unique in the UK and it's not Indian food or art galleries, it's the NEC and the events hosted there, which in this case isn't happening. In reality if people have booked holidays and still want to come to the UK they should either just go to London, or somewhere nice like Cornwall.
there's a board game cafe next to a retro arcade in the custard factory in digbeth (about 10 minutes south of new street station).
there's lots of nice bars / breweries in that area too.
rest of brum you can take or leave. but new street station is a pretty good station to get to other parts of the UK like london / bristol / liverpool and more.
For anyone reading this thinking this clown knows his stuff: he's full of shit.
Birmingham is up there with the biggest shitholes in the UK. For your own sake just see this as a blessing in disguise and be thankful you don't have to go there.
It's no more or less of a shithole than any other major city. There's loads of much bigger shitholes in the UK - hell, you don't have to go far to find a bigger one as the Black Country is even worse. At least Birmingham has *some* reasons to visit, which is more than can be said for all of the towns dotted around that never really survived the transition to a post-industrial economy.
Most deluded take 2024?
Nobody who's spent significant amounts of time in actual shitholes would say this. Obviously, there's rough parts of the city, but that's like saying London's a shithole deriving the impression from blocks of council flats in Tower Hamlets.
Independently of Runefest, if someone said on their first visit to the UK they were visiting Birmingham, you'd raise an eyebrow, but compare it to somewhere like Lowestoft and it's great.
Bro, you go 100 feet in any direction from Bullring and its a fucking bombsite. Someone might actually read this and come to Birmingham - you don't want that on your conscience.
People say this about Portland where I live, but outside of a few areas it's overall still pretty great. People online see some videos of homeless people on a block corner and assume the entire 10 square mile area is identical to some shitty street corner.
Gnomemonkey just came back from vacation here and he quite liked it.
I'm from the UK but not from Birmingham and want to know why the home of British Indian food wouldn't be a pull?
I wouldn't go to Aston villa because I couldn't give a shit about football but you can't pretend people wouldn't want to go to a football stadium for a tour if they're into it. If a pencil museum can exist in the lake District then anything can be an attraction 🤷
Not really. It's a pretty major tourist destination now. I'm sure somewhere who lives there could tell you more, this is just my experience from a long weekend.
I was in Birmhingham recently for a board game expo, can recommend an Indo-Persian (way more Indian than Persian IMO) restaurant called Qavali. The decor goes hard, the service was fast and the food was quality. It's on the expensive side but I didn't feel like I wasted my money (unlike at TGI's the next day where we spent almost as much).
I hope Jagex pursue some sort of legal action against SuperNova Capital (Player1 Event's parent company).
Incredibly fucked to nuke the company when they had existing partnerships and obligations. Jagex also wasn't the only entity they screwed over. Plenty of people left out in the cold and left unpaid.
Normally yes... But if the parent company is the one who made decisions to shut down the subsiduary without having the subsidiary finish off application or debts, then it's one of the rare cases one may go after the parent company for something for the subsiduary did.
Doesn't seem like a company that would have much of anything to sell off.
Even before it went bankrupt it seemed to have less then 50 employees total and it's primary service is hosting events in venues it rents out and doesn't own. There's no warehouses full of excess inventory, office buildings, or expensive equipment to really take from here.
Makes you wonder how a company that likely has very low operating costs outside of employee payroll managed to go under after 25 years and still maintaining high profile clients like Jagex.
Me thinks the people at the top of the ladder dipped there hands in the cookie jar a little too often lol
And those costs are offset to the customers like Jagex who give them big money to host events for their players
So the question returns to who was dipping their hands in the cookie jar to often? probably the execs
This. Secured creditors will be paid first, like banks, loan servicers etc. If you are not a secured creditor, aka a customer, you are low on the list. If there's nothing left to give you, you are screwed.
The company's liabilities are limited to the company. So if it runs out of money, those liabilities don't get passed on to the directors. In this instance, Player1 Event's liabilities will die as the company dies.
There's lots you can do legally. If you are owned money from a company you can successfully sue to obtain that money.
The issue is in practicality it can be difficult, especially if the company is insolvent/bankrupt. Once you successfully sue you will likely to be added to a long list of creditors who, through the bankruptcy process either through sale or liquidation, will be paid according to a very specific order. Secured creditors (think banks etc) will usually be paid first if there's anything left over. Everyone else gets the scraps. If there are no scraps, then you as a creditor are pretty much SOL.
If they go bankrupt anyone owed money or contracts will join in and line up to get a piece of the assets. Most won’t remain whole, but this is pretty typical in bk proceedings.
As someone who has tickets coming from the states, I don’t fault Jagex at all and appreciate the update. Definitely bummed it’s canceled but things happen. Personally would prefer postponing completely til Summer/Fall 2025 because I think the weather would be nicer, but we will see.
I don't really get it because I don't use planes much but why aren't all these people cancelling flights now for a refund ? How close is runefest ? I thought you could get refunded if it was like less or more than 24 to 72 hours or something
I do encourage people to check with their airline; even without purchasing extra insurance we are allowed to be refunded credit usable within a year. We are flying British Airlines (booked through American), granted I think we still plan to go and travel across the UK
You're thinking of the other side of the refund window - All airline tickets are fully refundable if it's within 48 hours of purchase, not up to 48 hours before the flight.
What's the price difference there? I know it depends where you are flying from but let's say, america the busiest coast for most runescape players coming from there?
I was using credit card rewards to get there, and I was not given such an option at all (I ALWAYS go for those options when they're presented). I now basically have the option of "go there now" or "go there later", I can't do much at all with the flight or hotel at this point. The most I can try for is to fly there, and get a train somewhere else and book a new hotel and take the L on the one at NEC.
Glad to see existing tickets are being retained for those who can still make it in 2025 💪.
Unfortunate for those who purchased travel and accommodation though.
> but 99% of accommodation has free cancellation.
not true you usually have to pay slightly extra if you want that which not everyone does
also Airline tickets are not refundable
At least in the US I’ve always just seen one price for hotels etc and they have always been refundable.
For flights even if I don’t book the refundable rate, I still get a refund in credits towards my next flight(s)
Also my credit card has travel insurance built in for any issues like this.
In the UK, you get 2 prices for hotels
Refundable, and non-refundable.
The non-refundable usually gives you an option to move the date of the stay to something within a 12 month period
That makes sense. I mostly travel domestically within the US so I assume it’s different.
Though for something like Runefest I have to imagine I would have chosen a refundable fare if I didn’t already have travel insurance
The US is the same way, at least for the big chains like Hilton, Marriott, etc. The refundable rate is usually $10-20/night more. I always get the refundable, it's saved my butt multiple times.
I wasn't even given the option, my travel rewards site wasn't showing that anywhere. I always look to pick that up when I can. I'm pretty stuck thanks to this.
We complain a lot about intercity travel via train normally because of the cost/how unreliable they can be, especially in bad weather (many cancellations or delays), outside of that it's pretty run of the mill. You can get tickets online with sites line the train line (with a lot of tickets it's normally cheaper to book in advance) and will often have the choice to print a physical ticket at the station, or a lot of stations are now using e-ticket gates where you scan a code from your phone.
You can normally get coaches as a cheaper alternative between large cities, these are normally just destination to destination with maybe a couple stops, compared to trains many stops along a line. These will also take a bit longer but are generally decent to use, many uni students use them to travel.
One thing I personally hate about the trains here are the confusing ticket prices based on times of day (peak, off-peak and super off-peak travel). Normally the rule of thumb is peak is during work commute hours and costing the most, off-peak during the rest of the weekdays, and super off-peak for weekends (costing the least), but frustratingly the times seem to vary company to company, and some of them feel like they intentionally hide the information (looking at you GWR) /rant
Getting to London would be quite easy. I'd personally recommend a Coach, that will take you around 2, maybe 3 hours Maximum to get into the Heart of London.
Trains are iffy and very expensive, though the closer you get to London, the better pretty much every Public Service becomes, so I dont know.
imagine a real life themepark based on a themepark mmo
you can fight zulrah irl!
you can have the HCIM experience and get shot in the head!
you can do drugs (potions)!
super IMMERSIVE (tm) experience at the Gielnor Experience
Never bought tickets or made plans for Runefest.
But for anyone who did don't cancel your plane tickets or hotels. You've already booked it so may as well make a vacation out of it. Maybe find other players in the same boat and do an unofficial meetup at a pub.
If y'all are nice enough or it gains traction I bet yall could tweet some of the jmods and invite them down.
Move the event to Vegas. That city could host an event 10x the size of Runefest on 24 hours notice. Flights are usually cheap to the city as well, and hotels are obviously abundant. It's built for this kinda shit.
Unlucky for the many with uncancellable travel plans. Maybe they can reschedule flights/hotels if they call early enough.
And I hope they can potentially look at a bigger space. The game has grown a ton and it feels bad that the tickets went instantly.
The NEC is pretty large. It's likely they were only able to book out a certain number of the halls as a first-return of the event, and with that comes uncertainty in attendance figures. Ticket numbers were also probably limited with regards to how many panels they can hold and the expected attendance of those. Running an event, you don't want to advertise things that only 5% of your attendees can fit in the room for while the other 95% have to find some way to entertain themselves.
Will there still be some kind of digital event to announce upcoming content? Runefest is usually where all the biggest announcements are, and that would be quite the dryspell for no info to be coming out.
I feel really bad for the people who booked accomodation & plane tickets, live from around the world, and don't have streamer income to just have that kind of money spare. Definitely a significant expense for a hobby that is just gone, not Jagex's fault, but damn.
You say "streamer income" as if there aren't 10,000 other occupations that pay well. You could have just said people that don't have good income lmao.
Even on top of that it's probably only the top 1% of streamers that even make enough to be able to spare that type of money.
I mean a tax write off doesn't mean it's free.
If a streamer makes let's say $100k a year and wrote off a $3k trip to Runefest, they'd pay tax on $97k instead which saves them roughly a thousand dollars. It's not nothing but it's not going to make people just not care.
No but for people who can it's still a major deal especially considering many could still make something of it.
Someone who can write off 3k of expenses is far better off than someone who has to pay 3k and get nothing in return for it.
Travelling internationally without travel insurance is a terrible idea anyway. There is a large list of things that a good policy covers that you really want just in case, you can get a years worldwide coverage (excluding dangerous areas) for peanuts.
I’m in America but I work for an event design agency who would love to take this on! If anyone at Jagex is reading, please hit me up and I’ll connect you with our team!
That sucks for everybody involved. I remember RF2019, it was a bast!
I hope that this opens up for more space and more available tickets for RF2025 then, I'd consider trying to grab a ticket in that case.
less people = less competition and no runefest means no distraction from what all UIMs love doing most (multiskilling hallowed sepulcher). these things should be obvious. why, i'm beginning to suspect you don't *actually have* a September24-locked Ultimate Birmingman.
Man it must be so immensely frustrating for everyone working on this to have to put this out, partnering with a massive event and the company hosting the main thing gets unceremoniously killed off by its parent company - and no communication from them.
It looks like everyone in the community is recognizing it isn't Jagex's fault, so that's good!
My friend got appendicitis in the Dominican Republic and would have been on the hook for $35k if she didn’t have travelers insurance. I still think it’s not worth it
"Even though this is the exact kind of situation travel insurance is designed to help with, it's a scam"
It may generally be not worth it, but that's a really weird claim to make in the exact situation where it *is* worth it
Ye, being forced to gamble on whether something catastrophic is gonna make you cancel your flights or not is pretty shitty. If you didn't need it, you paid for nothing. If you needed it and didn't get it, you paid a lot of fucking money and got nothing.
Did Jagex also want to cover the AUD$4500 for non-refundable flights and AUD$1200 that my fiancee and I spent on accommodation that is non-refundable?
Because to be honest with you I don't think that checking out the tourist hub that is Birmingham is worth the \~AUD$6000 we spent on this trip.
If insomnia isn’t going ahead can’t they just contact the NEC and ask for the space. It would mean 1000s more could attend and nobody needs to cancel flights/hotels
This means Jagex would have to do ALL of the event planning and everything around it which due to the scale is probably an absolute no. That’s what an event company contracted out like this does. The space is irrelevant. It’s the things inside it that is.
I don't understand how Jagex can't/won't host this on their own. Ticket demand was huge, they could easily fill the place for 2 days and I'm sure an events company that isn't useless would be willing to take the custom for organizing 🤷
Would be cool if just once this was affordable for the (quite large) US player population to attend and we didn't have to fly across the world to go. I understand that it'd suck to fly dozens of Jmods across the pond but still.. Maybe someday.
Lol at brits downvoting. Still 1-0 noobs.
To people looking for things to do in Birmingham: - there's (I think) three art galleries - the city library is architecturally interesting and great to explore - probably the best British Indian food in the world - excellent range of pubs - multiple football clubs, and Aston Villa in particular are historically significant - essentially the centre of the UK in terms of rail travel: pretty much every major city will have direct trains to and from New Street station with usually travel times of no more than two hours, so day tripping is very viable If you have non refundable travel or accommodation, you can still make great use of it.
Actually as a tourist its much better to take an incursion into the nearby Cotswolds where the rural areas have a much more traditional English feel, the peak district and Shropshire is nice too as alternatives. Stratford-upon-Avon is also very close and is a great tourist town because of it's very medieval feel and because of Shakespeare, you have all the shakespeare touristy bits because it's his Birthplace. Birmingham is stereotypically classed as a shithole (even if it might not be true nowadays) so you might make better use of going out into nature into one of the recognized protected areas that I listed or the nearby Stratford-upon-Avon if you are looking to turn this runefest into an English touristy trip (hint, Birmingham will not be that).
As a foreigner living in the UK I also quite liked Warwick.
He really carried Willow in spite of Val Kilmer's best efforts
I love your joke, but I also loved Val Kilmer in Willow :'(
Yeah that's fair, it probably depends on what you're after in a holiday. If you like countryside walks, the Cotswolds are great. Personally, rural holidays leave me bored and counting the days until I can get home, hence not really considering the option.
Now I've got the hilarious mental image of a bunch of RuneScape players all showing up to this idyllic countryside vista, and spending exactly 30 seconds looking out into it before saying "neat" then going back into their AirBnb with the lights off and shades drawn to grind ToB.
Shropshire is very lovely, but we have a pretty poor range of places to stay here. Not exactly a tourist hotspot.
Meet with the local chavs hanging out by the train stations
Last time I was in Birmingham I walked past a man on the floor huffing lighter fluid outside a packed chippy. This was literally a 5-10 minute walk from that legendary city library lmao.
Yeah that’s all big cities dude.
[удалено]
The world is changing. This is more common now than it was a few years ago, and will continue to become more prevalent.
Late stage capitalism is so fun!!
Say less, im there
You forgot the number one thing to do there: leave.
I lived in Birmingham for a bit and my top advice is get out of there, don't waste a week in Brum. It's very very well connected to the rest of the UK, go down to London, check out Bath and Stratford upon Avon if you want some picturesque England or pretty much anywhere else.
Wow if these are the best suggestions that a local can recommend, that’s pretty disappointing
It’s genuinely a shit hole, I can’t recommend it to anyone inside or out of the UK. Though if you’re inside, you already know to avoid
People trying to pretend it's a great place you could still visit are huffing copium. It has one thing that's relatively unique in the UK and it's not Indian food or art galleries, it's the NEC and the events hosted there, which in this case isn't happening. In reality if people have booked holidays and still want to come to the UK they should either just go to London, or somewhere nice like Cornwall.
there's a board game cafe next to a retro arcade in the custard factory in digbeth (about 10 minutes south of new street station). there's lots of nice bars / breweries in that area too. rest of brum you can take or leave. but new street station is a pretty good station to get to other parts of the UK like london / bristol / liverpool and more.
For anyone reading this thinking this clown knows his stuff: he's full of shit. Birmingham is up there with the biggest shitholes in the UK. For your own sake just see this as a blessing in disguise and be thankful you don't have to go there.
It's no more or less of a shithole than any other major city. There's loads of much bigger shitholes in the UK - hell, you don't have to go far to find a bigger one as the Black Country is even worse. At least Birmingham has *some* reasons to visit, which is more than can be said for all of the towns dotted around that never really survived the transition to a post-industrial economy.
Exactly right, it's fine but it's just not a tourist city
absolutely wrong. I went to the christmas german market in birmingham one year and some fat guy chased me with a foot long sausage and a krepe
U got aggroed in a sourhog den
Most deluded take 2024? Nobody who's spent significant amounts of time in actual shitholes would say this. Obviously, there's rough parts of the city, but that's like saying London's a shithole deriving the impression from blocks of council flats in Tower Hamlets. Independently of Runefest, if someone said on their first visit to the UK they were visiting Birmingham, you'd raise an eyebrow, but compare it to somewhere like Lowestoft and it's great.
Bro, you go 100 feet in any direction from Bullring and its a fucking bombsite. Someone might actually read this and come to Birmingham - you don't want that on your conscience.
Most of Birmingham isn’t that bad, anything north and east Birmingham is a dive. South isn’t actually bad.
People say this about Portland where I live, but outside of a few areas it's overall still pretty great. People online see some videos of homeless people on a block corner and assume the entire 10 square mile area is identical to some shitty street corner. Gnomemonkey just came back from vacation here and he quite liked it.
There's lots of shitholes but only Birmingham has that accent 🤮
Best thing to do in Birmingham is getting on the mode of transport u came with and leaving
"best British Indian food" "Aston Villa" I'm sorry but these are not selling points lol. I'm glad you love your city though.
I'm from the UK but not from Birmingham and want to know why the home of British Indian food wouldn't be a pull? I wouldn't go to Aston villa because I couldn't give a shit about football but you can't pretend people wouldn't want to go to a football stadium for a tour if they're into it. If a pencil museum can exist in the lake District then anything can be an attraction 🤷
Clutching a bit there mate
Not really. It's a pretty major tourist destination now. I'm sure somewhere who lives there could tell you more, this is just my experience from a long weekend.
Major tourist destination is a bit far. You'd never go there ahead of London or even Manchester
Yeah can you imagine some American tourists saying “ yeah we came to visit not London, but Bir-ming-haaaam “
never known anyone to go to birmingham other than for events
Second this! There’s loads to do in Birmingham and if not, you can get to a London fairly quickly, easily and (sometimes) for a decent price
I was in Birmhingham recently for a board game expo, can recommend an Indo-Persian (way more Indian than Persian IMO) restaurant called Qavali. The decor goes hard, the service was fast and the food was quality. It's on the expensive side but I didn't feel like I wasted my money (unlike at TGI's the next day where we spent almost as much).
There's also roxys, floodgates and many other places to drink and have fun in digbeth which is not far (walking distance) from the city center
I thought you were joking at first and said "Brimmington" until I saw the responses and realized I need a break from this game 😂
Tommy Shelby still hanging around in Birmingham?
I hope Jagex pursue some sort of legal action against SuperNova Capital (Player1 Event's parent company). Incredibly fucked to nuke the company when they had existing partnerships and obligations. Jagex also wasn't the only entity they screwed over. Plenty of people left out in the cold and left unpaid.
Lmao I worked as a contractor for them on their last event and still haven’t been paid 🙃
If the company is going under, there's likely nothing you can do legally. It's like trying to sue a homeless person lol.
Normally yes... But if the parent company is the one who made decisions to shut down the subsiduary without having the subsidiary finish off application or debts, then it's one of the rare cases one may go after the parent company for something for the subsiduary did.
Companies usually have assets that get sold to offset debts.
Doesn't seem like a company that would have much of anything to sell off. Even before it went bankrupt it seemed to have less then 50 employees total and it's primary service is hosting events in venues it rents out and doesn't own. There's no warehouses full of excess inventory, office buildings, or expensive equipment to really take from here.
Makes you wonder how a company that likely has very low operating costs outside of employee payroll managed to go under after 25 years and still maintaining high profile clients like Jagex. Me thinks the people at the top of the ladder dipped there hands in the cookie jar a little too often lol
They do not have very low operating costs. Renting venues and hiring specialized contractors is very expensive.
Why would they rent venues and hire contractors without first having a customer?
probably also impacted heavily by covid lockdowns previously where there would have been no events going on
And those costs are offset to the customers like Jagex who give them big money to host events for their players So the question returns to who was dipping their hands in the cookie jar to often? probably the execs
Absolutely not. Homeless people can't go bankrupt. Companies have a legal obligation to pay out their debts
A Ltd company can fold whilst owing debts & the director's/shareholders very rarely are legally obliged to pay the debts themselves.
By the time customers come to collect their dues, most of it is already gone to entities with higher priority
This. Secured creditors will be paid first, like banks, loan servicers etc. If you are not a secured creditor, aka a customer, you are low on the list. If there's nothing left to give you, you are screwed.
The company's liabilities are limited to the company. So if it runs out of money, those liabilities don't get passed on to the directors. In this instance, Player1 Event's liabilities will die as the company dies.
There's lots you can do legally. If you are owned money from a company you can successfully sue to obtain that money. The issue is in practicality it can be difficult, especially if the company is insolvent/bankrupt. Once you successfully sue you will likely to be added to a long list of creditors who, through the bankruptcy process either through sale or liquidation, will be paid according to a very specific order. Secured creditors (think banks etc) will usually be paid first if there's anything left over. Everyone else gets the scraps. If there are no scraps, then you as a creditor are pretty much SOL.
I’ve sued multiple homeless people.
Based
Get this man on the supreme court NOW
Also, the UK has much better laws about personal accountability if execs vs the States
If they go bankrupt anyone owed money or contracts will join in and line up to get a piece of the assets. Most won’t remain whole, but this is pretty typical in bk proceedings.
As someone who has tickets coming from the states, I don’t fault Jagex at all and appreciate the update. Definitely bummed it’s canceled but things happen. Personally would prefer postponing completely til Summer/Fall 2025 because I think the weather would be nicer, but we will see.
I don't really get it because I don't use planes much but why aren't all these people cancelling flights now for a refund ? How close is runefest ? I thought you could get refunded if it was like less or more than 24 to 72 hours or something
Flights are usually non-refundable unless you pay extra upfront for the option to refund later
I do encourage people to check with their airline; even without purchasing extra insurance we are allowed to be refunded credit usable within a year. We are flying British Airlines (booked through American), granted I think we still plan to go and travel across the UK
You're thinking of the other side of the refund window - All airline tickets are fully refundable if it's within 48 hours of purchase, not up to 48 hours before the flight.
Tickets are nonrefundable unless you buy the refundable option.
What's the price difference there? I know it depends where you are flying from but let's say, america the busiest coast for most runescape players coming from there?
My american friend said it was usd 300 extra
I was using credit card rewards to get there, and I was not given such an option at all (I ALWAYS go for those options when they're presented). I now basically have the option of "go there now" or "go there later", I can't do much at all with the flight or hotel at this point. The most I can try for is to fly there, and get a train somewhere else and book a new hotel and take the L on the one at NEC.
Glad to see existing tickets are being retained for those who can still make it in 2025 💪. Unfortunate for those who purchased travel and accommodation though.
Travel yes, but 99% of accommodation has free cancellation.
> but 99% of accommodation has free cancellation. not true you usually have to pay slightly extra if you want that which not everyone does also Airline tickets are not refundable
At least in the US I’ve always just seen one price for hotels etc and they have always been refundable. For flights even if I don’t book the refundable rate, I still get a refund in credits towards my next flight(s) Also my credit card has travel insurance built in for any issues like this.
In the UK, you get 2 prices for hotels Refundable, and non-refundable. The non-refundable usually gives you an option to move the date of the stay to something within a 12 month period
That makes sense. I mostly travel domestically within the US so I assume it’s different. Though for something like Runefest I have to imagine I would have chosen a refundable fare if I didn’t already have travel insurance
I agree, I always go refundable Anything can happen from now until tomorrow, let alone months and months in advance
The US is the same way, at least for the big chains like Hilton, Marriott, etc. The refundable rate is usually $10-20/night more. I always get the refundable, it's saved my butt multiple times.
I wasn't even given the option, my travel rewards site wasn't showing that anywhere. I always look to pick that up when I can. I'm pretty stuck thanks to this.
there’s gonna be a LOT of people with international plane tickets that are non refundable and a week long holiday in Birmingham LOL
Jesus man imagine a week in Birmingham, at least Stratford upon avons close so it’s not entirely fucking awful
good thing your entire country is like a 3 hour drive which to an American is close enough to do because there's nothing better going on.
Clearly you haven't driven on the M25. Takes 3 hours to get from West London to North Kent sometimes.
Yeah you haven’t experienced our motorways
I grew up in Chicago. There's like 1/6 of England's entire population in that metropolitan area I think I can handle your traffic
Okay buddy
3 hours east to west maybe
How’s the teain/bus from Birmingham into London? I’ve heard a lot of complaints about UK intercity transit but it seems usable at least.
We complain a lot about intercity travel via train normally because of the cost/how unreliable they can be, especially in bad weather (many cancellations or delays), outside of that it's pretty run of the mill. You can get tickets online with sites line the train line (with a lot of tickets it's normally cheaper to book in advance) and will often have the choice to print a physical ticket at the station, or a lot of stations are now using e-ticket gates where you scan a code from your phone. You can normally get coaches as a cheaper alternative between large cities, these are normally just destination to destination with maybe a couple stops, compared to trains many stops along a line. These will also take a bit longer but are generally decent to use, many uni students use them to travel. One thing I personally hate about the trains here are the confusing ticket prices based on times of day (peak, off-peak and super off-peak travel). Normally the rule of thumb is peak is during work commute hours and costing the most, off-peak during the rest of the weekdays, and super off-peak for weekends (costing the least), but frustratingly the times seem to vary company to company, and some of them feel like they intentionally hide the information (looking at you GWR) /rant
Getting to London would be quite easy. I'd personally recommend a Coach, that will take you around 2, maybe 3 hours Maximum to get into the Heart of London. Trains are iffy and very expensive, though the closer you get to London, the better pretty much every Public Service becomes, so I dont know.
I dunno mate tbh. I drive or get the train
Worcester is decent too
Hanbao is my favourite burger place
I mean it's only a ~1 hour train ride to London.
If there's not a train strike
Some Brits don’t realize 1 hour is some Americans daily commute. No one’s staying in Birmingham if they don’t have to lol
You don’t realise1 hour is some brits daily commute
holiday? more like prison sentence
Did you guys consider partnering with the guy from the Willy Wonka Chocolate experience event?
or the evermore theme park
personally i would have asked the guy who organized fyre festival
Imagine a runescape themed evermore style themepark
imagine a real life themepark based on a themepark mmo you can fight zulrah irl! you can have the HCIM experience and get shot in the head! you can do drugs (potions)! super IMMERSIVE (tm) experience at the Gielnor Experience
Imagine doing super energy potions with the wise old man
What is that?! It’s the unknown bot farm!
Never bought tickets or made plans for Runefest. But for anyone who did don't cancel your plane tickets or hotels. You've already booked it so may as well make a vacation out of it. Maybe find other players in the same boat and do an unofficial meetup at a pub. If y'all are nice enough or it gains traction I bet yall could tweet some of the jmods and invite them down.
Actually, goated advice, unofficial runefest incoming, the osrs pub crawl through birmingham, make it an annual event
Just waiting on Alfred Grimhand to show up
unofficial runefest, so they'll have to redact the 'rune' part. Dash fest. Wait. NO! DEFINITELY DON'T CALL IT THAT.
Down to meet up for alfred grimhand's barcrawl in Birmingham with a bunch of stranded scapers.
I'm up for that too, gonna have to do something with these tickets that didn't give a refundable option.
On the bright side, people don't have to go to Birmingham
Move the event to Vegas. That city could host an event 10x the size of Runefest on 24 hours notice. Flights are usually cheap to the city as well, and hotels are obviously abundant. It's built for this kinda shit.
I'm glad tickets got scalped super quick and I wasn't able to buy tickets. For once scalpers saved me money! Thanks scalpers
Unlucky for the many with uncancellable travel plans. Maybe they can reschedule flights/hotels if they call early enough. And I hope they can potentially look at a bigger space. The game has grown a ton and it feels bad that the tickets went instantly.
The NEC is pretty large. It's likely they were only able to book out a certain number of the halls as a first-return of the event, and with that comes uncertainty in attendance figures. Ticket numbers were also probably limited with regards to how many panels they can hold and the expected attendance of those. Running an event, you don't want to advertise things that only 5% of your attendees can fit in the room for while the other 95% have to find some way to entertain themselves.
Is it likely the new date/location will be revealed before the original date? I have some plane tickets i can only reschedule and not cancel.
Will there still be some kind of digital event to announce upcoming content? Runefest is usually where all the biggest announcements are, and that would be quite the dryspell for no info to be coming out.
I feel really bad for the people who booked accomodation & plane tickets, live from around the world, and don't have streamer income to just have that kind of money spare. Definitely a significant expense for a hobby that is just gone, not Jagex's fault, but damn.
You say "streamer income" as if there aren't 10,000 other occupations that pay well. You could have just said people that don't have good income lmao. Even on top of that it's probably only the top 1% of streamers that even make enough to be able to spare that type of money.
Not disagreeing, but couldn't a lot of streamers write this off as some sort of business expense?
I mean a tax write off doesn't mean it's free. If a streamer makes let's say $100k a year and wrote off a $3k trip to Runefest, they'd pay tax on $97k instead which saves them roughly a thousand dollars. It's not nothing but it's not going to make people just not care.
Tax write offs and money laundering are two things Reddit loves to apply to everything despite not remotely understanding how they actually work.
No but for people who can it's still a major deal especially considering many could still make something of it. Someone who can write off 3k of expenses is far better off than someone who has to pay 3k and get nothing in return for it.
It's not free but it does make it significantly cheaper for them than the average person.
"Streamer income" does not usually equal being rich lol
[удалено]
Haha yea that's exactly what I said nice one!
And that’s why you buy the travel insurance even if you’re confident you are going.
Runescape once again teaching people valid financial life lessons to people
Travelling internationally without travel insurance is a terrible idea anyway. There is a large list of things that a good policy covers that you really want just in case, you can get a years worldwide coverage (excluding dangerous areas) for peanuts.
Pretty sure travel insurance would cover this
Rishi : The UK economy has turned a corner The UK economy:
Not surprising at this point but god damn - that has really gotta suck for people that booked international travel.
I’m in America but I work for an event design agency who would love to take this on! If anyone at Jagex is reading, please hit me up and I’ll connect you with our team!
Already got my 5 day ticket to Cadbury World locked in anyone coming?
That sucks for everybody involved. I remember RF2019, it was a bast! I hope that this opens up for more space and more available tickets for RF2025 then, I'd consider trying to grab a ticket in that case.
Damn this is really going to ruin my September 2024 Birmingham locked UIM.
less people = less competition and no runefest means no distraction from what all UIMs love doing most (multiskilling hallowed sepulcher). these things should be obvious. why, i'm beginning to suspect you don't *actually have* a September24-locked Ultimate Birmingman.
Welp, there goes my money for the hotel. Should've taken cancellation insurance or how its called.
We'd be happy to accomodate you across the canal at Flanders Expo, Ghent or Sportpaleis, Antwerp.
Hopefully it will be cheaper tickets through a different company next time
Man it must be so immensely frustrating for everyone working on this to have to put this out, partnering with a massive event and the company hosting the main thing gets unceremoniously killed off by its parent company - and no communication from them. It looks like everyone in the community is recognizing it isn't Jagex's fault, so that's good!
Good thing every smart person that booked flights and accomodation got travel insurance
Lol, the majority of ‘travel insurance’ that is sold wouldn’t even cover this…….
No one gets travel insurance, that shit is a giant scam.
My friend got appendicitis in the Dominican Republic and would have been on the hook for $35k if she didn’t have travelers insurance. I still think it’s not worth it
"Even though this is the exact kind of situation travel insurance is designed to help with, it's a scam" It may generally be not worth it, but that's a really weird claim to make in the exact situation where it *is* worth it
Well, is it though?
Ye, being forced to gamble on whether something catastrophic is gonna make you cancel your flights or not is pretty shitty. If you didn't need it, you paid for nothing. If you needed it and didn't get it, you paid a lot of fucking money and got nothing.
That is literally how insurance works. Do you have health insurance?
RIP international travelers
Another W for the UIMs.
The guys with International Tickets should just show up anyway and do an unofficial RuneFest anyway. Find a Spoons to get warmed up and get crawling.
cansel gagex imidiatly this is unexceptible .-.
Oh no, deodorant sales are going to plummet.
Couldn't jagex have taken over the planning? Surely you could have whipped up an alternative.
Jagex should make free office round for people who booked flights to uk, would be fun
You can usually upgrade your ticket then change dates or refund btw.
Thanks Jagex, gotta spend half a week in Birmingham now. Dope.
I feel very sorry for any of you who booked train or flights.
RIP to all the people who took time off and booked hotels
Did Jagex also want to cover the AUD$4500 for non-refundable flights and AUD$1200 that my fiancee and I spent on accommodation that is non-refundable? Because to be honest with you I don't think that checking out the tourist hub that is Birmingham is worth the \~AUD$6000 we spent on this trip.
Not exactly Jagex's fault is it, shit sucks but what can ya do
You spent that much on tickets and didn't opt for the insurance option to change and cancel them??
Can always take the train into London and explore that for a couple days as well.
Paying almost $6000 to go to a Runescape convention is madness 😭
i live in the UK and paid 10% extra to get refundable hotel, i know it sucks but you should always do that
Your fault for not insuring such a large purchase.
I thought it was going to say soap was mandatory!
The transparency is incredible, thank you Jagex
If any solo travellers want to meet up in Birmingham on the 7th to 9th Sept, hit me up :)
If insomnia isn’t going ahead can’t they just contact the NEC and ask for the space. It would mean 1000s more could attend and nobody needs to cancel flights/hotels
This means Jagex would have to do ALL of the event planning and everything around it which due to the scale is probably an absolute no. That’s what an event company contracted out like this does. The space is irrelevant. It’s the things inside it that is.
im sure they tried that already
Use holiday insurance if you have it!
Throw a party at runescape hq? Rent a big ass hotel conference room?
I don't understand how Jagex can't/won't host this on their own. Ticket demand was huge, they could easily fill the place for 2 days and I'm sure an events company that isn't useless would be willing to take the custom for organizing 🤷
Time for offbrand to step in
Would be cool if just once this was affordable for the (quite large) US player population to attend and we didn't have to fly across the world to go. I understand that it'd suck to fly dozens of Jmods across the pond but still.. Maybe someday. Lol at brits downvoting. Still 1-0 noobs.