Runescap – Page 2 – MMO Fallout

Jagex: Bots And Buying Banned Accounts…

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?

Runescape Bot Website Steals Accounts: Surprise!

ff14-attack-of-the-clones-0020 — Final Fantasy XIV bots.

Security is a priority here at MMO Fallout, among our many priorities that have no static value and tend to change depending on what is making headlines. Botting, being a completely legitimate community that breaks no rules and in no way creates a seedy underbelly to a community, at no way puts the account or computer of the owner at risk. So imagine my surprise when I get people asking me to warn the Runescape community about a popular bot.

According to my sources, this very popular bot program (designed to play the game for the player) has been harvesting information including usernames and passwords, and upon the return of free trade, many players are finding themselves with their banks cleared, their passwords changed, etc. For the simple desire to sit back and watch the world burn, I won’t mention the cheat program that was compromised, although if you use it you are likely seeing its effects by now.

Moral of the story: Expect shady business from shady people. Oh, and don’t come complaining to me that I should be warning cheaters about a security breach for a game they are technically not playing.

Banned? Jagex Will Sell You Your Account Back

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!

As posted on the Runescape official website,

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.

Mark Your Calendars, Runescape: February 1st Free Trade

Barrows_Brothers_1024x768 — For Morytania!

“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.

Runescape: Voting The Wilderness Part 2

The_jagex_team.._and_paintball.. — Don't you wish your dev team was...

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.

New Runescape Trailer

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.

Runescape: Clever Publicity Stunt To Bring Back The Wilderness

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:

http://www.runescape.com/wilderness

Celebrate 10 Years of Runescape With 10 Grand

runescape_140x190_new — Large breasted barmaid not included...

Runescape turns ten in 2011, and Jagex wants to roll in the first decade with, and this is just a guess, an overabundance of the number ten. Throughout 2011, Jagex will be rolling the dice and picking lucky winners out of a hat in order to win fabulous cash prizes (real cash, not Jagex bucks). The competition runs through each month in 2011, with a winner drawn the following month.

For ten months in 2011, ten players will win one of ten one/tenth of ten thousand dollar prizes. So, ten players will win a thousand dollars every month for ten months. For every day you are a member, you will receive one entry into the competition. Remain a member the whole month and you’ll receive an entire month’s worth of entries. The competition runs January through October presumably, offering a one in approximately one million odds each month to win.

Best of luck, Runescapers. You can read more details on the competition here: http://www.runescape.com/competition_details.ws. But seriously, how much would a date with a real life version of that barmaid cost?

Runescape: Security and Username Purging

: Bank it!

Here at MMO Fallout, we follow the intuitive systems that various companies use to keep your account secure. So far, the safest systems we’ve seen also happen to be the most cumbersome, such as the authenticator system used by Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft, while others are intuitive and useful, such as the on-screen keyboard that multiple MMOs have made use of.

On Runescape, however, Jagex has decided to take the fight to brute forcing, by disconnecting the login name from the character. In an update today, Jagex has implemented a system that will take effect for new accounts: When registering, players are now required to submit their email address which will be used as the player’s login rather than their toon’s username. As a person’s email address is not displayed in-game, it will be impossible to guess a person’s login information.

In other Runescape account related news, Jagex plans on freeing up millions of account names by implementing a system where names are freed up as certain prerequisites are met. If an account meets all of the below requirements:

It hasn’t been logged into in the last year
It hasn’t been used to purchase any membership
It has no RuneScape skills of level 30 or above

The name will be put up for anyone who wishes to take it. If a player loses their username, they will be required to choose a new one upon logging in.

More Runescape as it appears.

Jagex Goes Old School With Undercroft

screenshot_3_main — Mmm so two dimensional

Undercroft is not a new game, by any means. In fact, it was developed and sold through the Apple store for Ipod/Iphone/Ipad up until last month, for a few bucks. Rake In Grass, the developer, sold the game and IP to another game studio, and I’ll give you one guess as to which studio bought it up (psst. Look at the title.) The app was pulled from the app store and re-released yesterday (the 16th) under Jagex’s branding, completely for free. Considering Undercroft weighs in at 18mb, the game is touted as holding over 20 hours of gameplay, 60 enemies, and over 750 items.

The game plays out like the old faux-3D games many of us used to play before you kids and your true-3D experiences. Players create a party of four adventurers who wake up in a jail only to find that they got drunk the previous night and chased a local peasant woman’s chickens all over town, and you will not be allowed to leave town until you find all of them. Everything is done from first person, and the game plays pretty differently depending on which abilities you choose.

For example, one of my party members is an old woman, who happens to be a priest. I gave her the spells heal and indulgence, the latter of which is an interesting spell because it persuades NPCs that they are sinners, and must pay as a penance. So I approached the woman whose chickens I had potentially killed in a drunken stupor, and made her pay me for her sins. Then I found all the chickens, obtained the reward, and made her pay me again. Afterward, I forced the guard who wouldn’t let me leave town to pay me for his sins.

Hopefully Jagex is working on a sequel/expansion, but until then Undercroft is available 100% free, no charges at all (except the cost of an iPod/iPad).

This game is literally foaming over with nostalgia. If you have an iTouch/ipod/iPad, you should check out this app. But don’t take my word for it, check out the trolls on the iTunes reviews!

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