The video above showcases just one of the many sites in Runescape where botters (almost all of them gold farmers) are farming a mini-game. Now, in this particular mini-game, players must run through a maze, avoiding the creatures that roam it, otherwise they are teleported back to the start. A Splinter Cell stealth-style game. One of the creatures, as noted in the video, became stuck in place, making the maze impossible to complete. That, of course, does not stop the mass of bots from trying to force their way through anyway.
History repeats itself, and much like last time (2007), Jagex will likely not act until the gold farmers start hitting them where it hurts: The bank. A major point I’ve always thrown forward is that the 2007 trade restriction updates were put into place in retaliation not against botting, but against credit card fraud: Gold farmers using stolen credit cards to pay for membership. I’m not going to speculate on how the bots are paying for their membership this time, but I find it unlikely they are suddenly going legitimate.
I’ve been involved in more player moderator/volunteer positions with online games than I can count, and one aspect that has always remained the same is the expectation of involvement. If a player asks for help and I ignore them, I stood to be fired. If there was a player cheating and I did nothing about it, I stood to be fired. If a player was harassing other players, and I didn’t mute him, I stood to be fired. If I acted like an idiot, or made false statements, I stood to be fired. Just because I wasn’t getting paid, didn’t mean I didn’t have some expectation of reliability and professionalism.
Cue in Runescape, where I’ve always said Jagex reads their community about as well as I can read a book sitting in a chair sculpted out of lava. Jagex has taken the laid back approach of “well you are just players so if you don’t want to help others, you don’t have to.” As expected, this has simply lead to a large number of moderators who accept the position just for the fancy crown next to their name in chat, or simply to mute people they don’t like (I should note that the latter generally do not last long as moderators).
While Jagex does a decent job of culling corrupt moderators, what they should be focusing on is the indifference aspect. If a moderator is present when a player is breaking the rules, and does not report them, they should be removed. Moderators who are inactive for a period of time should also be removed. I specifically left out answering questions because with how many players are on at any given time, getting an answer from players should not be difficult.
I am not suggesting that player moderators should be forced to go hunting for rule breakers, but rather just deal with them as they appear. I agree with the sentiment that player moderators are just players, but not to the extent that they can just ignore a problem as a normal player might. And if you don’t want to enforce the rules when you see them being broken, there is also a simple answer: Don’t accept the invitation when you receive it.
I’ve been involved in more player moderator/volunteer positions with online games than I can count, and one aspect that has always remained the same is the expectation of involvement. If a player asks for help and I ignore them, I stood to be fired. If there was a player cheating and I did nothing about it, I stood to be fired. If a player was harassing other players, and I didn’t mute him, I stood to be fired. If I acted like an idiot, or made false statements, I stood to be fired. Just because I wasn’t getting paid, didn’t mean I didn’t have some expectation of reliability and professionalism.
Cue in Runescape, where I’ve always said Jagex reads their community about as well as I can read a book sitting in a chair sculpted out of lava. Jagex has taken the laid back approach of “well you are just players so if you don’t want to help others, you don’t have to.” As expected, this has simply lead to a large number of moderators who accept the position just for the fancy crown next to their name in chat, or simply to mute people they don’t like (I should note that the latter generally do not last long as moderators).
While Jagex does a decent job of culling corrupt moderators, what they should be focusing on is the indifference aspect. If a moderator is present when a player is breaking the rules, and does not report them, they should be removed. Moderators who are inactive for a period of time should also be removed. I specifically left out answering questions because with how many players are on at any given time, getting an answer from players should not be difficult.
I am not suggesting that player moderators should be forced to go hunting for rule breakers, but rather just deal with them as they appear. I agree with the sentiment that player moderators are just players, but not to the extent that they can just ignore a problem as a normal player might. And if you don’t want to enforce the rules when you see them being broken, there is also a simple answer: Don’t accept the invitation when you receive it.
Jagex is an inspiration of hope in the MMO genre. Born out of a side project by Andrew Gower, Runescape has since gone on to become the most popular free to play MMO gracing our internets, crafting a membership system that not only gave an enormous amount of content for a low price, but also creating a free to play portion that not only continues to evolve, but offers a safe haven for men of questionable age to become the sexy seventeen year old girl looking for a relationship of questionable legality with a studly rich boyfriend, that they’ve always dreamed of being. In the past few years, Jagex became publisher for War of Legends, an Evony-style game, became their own mini-game developer (FunOrb), bought the Iphone game Undercroft, and
Now, for those of you keeping track, Jagex has been in development of Stellar Dawn, originally Mechscape, originally announced in 2008 for a 2009 release, followed by a 2010 release, with our latest news being a 2011 release. Considering these delays, I noted the absurdity that Jagex was working on a third MMO, an untitled fantasy title that is not Runescape 2. Granted, the FunOrb team hasn’t put out a new game since September 2010, so Jagex does have some resources that could be thrown onto a fourth mmo, right?
Yes, I said fourth MMO, if you hadn’t discerned such from the title. MCV is reporting that Jagex has entered into a deal with Hasbro to make Transformers into an MMO for release when? 2012, according to the report. Mark Gerhard was quoted saying:
“There is a huge appetite for an online Transformers game and we will utilise every bit of our development and publishing expertise to deliver a dynamic and action-packed game that Transformers fans will find irresistible.”
More on the Transformer MMO’s delay to 2014 when it comes…and assuming MMO Fallout is still online then.
I don’t want to get into the whole discussion on whether or not Jagex is a corrupt corporate entity, but with last week’s news that the developer is now offering the option to pay to be unbanned, one has to bring up the ethical concerns of a company having a financial interest in banning its own players. As one player put it, imagine if you will that a judge received 20% of the fines he issues out. Sure, plenty of judges would put ethics above money and still work fairly, but when those odd cases do slip through the cracks and a player is unfairly punished, it will bring up the question of “are they ignoring my appeals because they are incompetent, or because they think I’ll pay up to be unbanned?”
The official response from Jagex (Mark H) is that these fees are being used to fund the ICU (Internal Conflicts Unit?) so that less membership fees and advertising revenue have to be used to fund it. Jagex’s official policy appears to be that cheaters should have to pay to fund the staff that have to look through their appeals. Again, the specifics are something Jagex refuse to release, so we’ll have to wait until someone is given this offer before we can talk specifics.
But while we’re on the subject of cheaters, Jagex announced alongside the wilderness vote that they had a system in place that was infallible in catching bots. Naturally, I advised players to be wary of this claim, as it had been made in the past to no avail. Nonetheless, I was proven correct over the past week since Jagex revived free trade. In many parts of the free world, and members worlds, bots are more common than even before free trade was initially taken away.
So Jagex is capable of removing the cheaters, but unwilling, which would mean they lied about having a no tolerance policy. Otherwise, they are willing, but incapable, which would also mean they lied about the system they had in place. Which one is it?
Don’t you just hate when this happens? You spend half of your time in Runescape either cursing at other players, or trying to scam new players by selling them rare black lobsters for a few hundred thousand, and suddenly you find yourself with so many warnings you cannot appeal that you are permanently banned from the game. What’s a guy to do, when he’s already wasted his appeals by reminding Jagex that they suck and that you don’t care if you’re banned forever because you’d spend more time with your girlfriend if you were? Simple, buy your account back!
If Jagex bans any account as a result of your breach of the Rules of RuneScape and you have exhausted the Offence Appeals Process, Jagex may, in its absolute discretion, give you an opportunity to make a fixed payment to reinstate the account.
The question that remains is how much does it cost to get your account unbanned, and for what offenses is Jagex willing to unban the account?
From the outside looking in, it almost seems as if Jagex is on a campaign to stop banning players who break the rules. Not too long ago, the company removed its no-tolerance policy on using third party software to automate actions, instead opting to reset levels rather than outright ban. Undoubtedly this will help Jagex’s subscriber base, but do they really want to reintroduce the players who were removed for being a detriment to the community?
I’m going to seek out more information on how much getting unbanned costs, and will follow up this story with new information as it arises.
“Thank you to all those of you who took part in the historic RuneScape Referendum, which ended on Friday. We received an incredible 1.2 million votes, with a united 91% of you voting for the restoration of free trade and the Wilderness. We have heard your call and will be restoring these much loved features to RuneScape on Tuesday 1st February.”
Eventually someone will listen to me that the “vote” was nothing more than a publicity stunt, albeit a successful one, and that the return of free trade was guaranteed months ago when Jagex started coding it and working on the update. Far be it from me to say that the Jagex crew isn’t fast, but to think that they will be able to move features out of the wilderness, recode and script entire quests, redesign the entire area, code in free trade in regards to newer item functions, redesign the wilderness to work with items that are unusable in PvP scenarios, and more in two weeks is a little ridiculous.
But the official announcement is now dated. Mark your calendars for February 1st (note: allow for last minute delays) because that is when the Wilderness and free trade are returning after a good three year absence.
Of course, now is the greatest time to continue speculation. What will happen with overload potions, which dramatically raise combat stats and are unusable in dangerous player vs player combat? What about corrupt dragon and ancient warrior armor/weapons which are only capable of obtaining through current player vs player combat? Brawling gloves? Ancient artifacts? What about item lending? Where will the quests from the wilderness be placed? The activities from the wilderness? I think you get my point about this being in development far longer than December’s poll.
And more importantly: What is Jagex doing to keep the game from being swamped with bots and gold farmers like it was pre-trade? They seem to be very sure of themselves that their secret weapon can combat this.
The announcement that free trade is coming back to Runescape has sent players into a frenzy, more so asking the question of what will remain in the game when this update goes live. There have been quite a few updates over the past three years that conflict with there being a dangerous wilderness, that Jagex is going to have to look at them on a case by case basis.
Luckily, on the new Runescape page, where Jagex has taken the liberty of actually requiring players to sign in to vote, which oddly enough only as 300,000 votes a couple days later (as opposed to the 1.2 million votes within 24 hours that the first poll achieved through no botting whatsoever).
There will be no limits on trade, both player to player, through the Grand Exchange, and via the party room.
Unlimited staking will return.
The item lending, assist, and lootshare/coinshare will remain.
The wilderness will be once again open to Player Vs Player combat.
Quests and activities in the wilderness will be moved to other areas.
There will be new ways to achieve PvP Gear.
Revenants will be relocated.
Gravestones will remain, but only outside of the wilderness.
PVP/Bounty Hunter worlds will be removed.
Wilderness content is being reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
It will be interesting to see what Jagex does with PvP gear, as gear like Corrupted Dragon (the highest tier armor for free players), brawling gloves, and ancient warrior equipment is only obtainable through random drops from other players.
Now if only Runescape looked like this. The above trailer was released on Jagex’s Youtube account today, and paints an interesting picture of events to come.
Back in 2007, in an attempt to combat rampant real world trading that threatened to knock Runescape out of existence, Jagex implemented a drastic series of updates that resulted in a dramatic change for the way Runescape functioned. Items were assigned numerical values, and trade restricted based on those values. Players no longer dropped items for others to see upon death, and gravestones were implemented to safe-guard their belongings for a temporary period of time. Player vs Player combat in the “wilderness” was removed completely, replaced by PvP mini-games.
Since then, Jagex has restructured the rules slightly. The bounty hunter mini-game was removed completely, and replaced with special worlds where player vs player combat can take place anywhere, as well as other special PvP worlds. The trade restrictions have been lessened in some circumstances, and between players who have been friends for a long time, as well as a membership perk. Still, many players long for a time when it was possible to loot someone upon death, or for the ability to gank someone in the wilderness.
Jagex launched a new page asking players if they would like the Wilderness back, as well as free trade, and the “yes” answers are flooding in, literally, at a rate of about a hundred fifty per second (I took the screenshot as I was writing the first sentence. At this point the vote is now up to 407 thousand). If enough [citation needed] players vote yes, Jagex will apparently return to the old practices. No idea on how many votes will be required. (409,000 votes)
If you hadn’t noticed by the manner in which the voting is taking place, this is essentially a publicity stunt and the decision has already been made as to whether or not the updates will be reversed. There is no method of preventing flooding, you need a valid username but you don’t have to login or provide any real account details, and there is no option to press “no,” other than to not vote. (415,000 votes)
Still, this is a fun publicity stunt. The voting ends on the 14th of January, which at this rate will result in probably around every one of Runescape’s 130 million registered usernames being thrown into the pot, whether or not that person actually wants the update. (423,000 votes)
More on Runescape as it appears (424,000 votes). Head here to vote:
MMO Fallout 