Runescape – Page 45 – MMO Fallout

Jagex Bans 20,000 In Botwatch Update

Last year RuneScape saw the first stages of Botwatch, a new system designed to end the constant game of cat and mouse between Jagex and gold farmers, and put an end to the rampant cheating, spam, and gold sales once and for all. Instead of altering the game’s code, Botwatch was designed to learn over time how bots behave, and learn the difference between human behavior and those dictated by machine. Botwatch is capable of banning on its own volition, and thus must be tuned to ensure no false positives are detected.

In a recent update to Botwatch, the program banned over twenty thousand accounts accused of gold farming:

We recently introduced the next phase of our anti-bot technology Botwatch, and it’s already showing its teeth in the battle against botting activity in RuneScape. Last night alone, we conducted a mass ban of no less than 20,000 gold farming accounts. This is a huge blow against gold farming, and you should see the difference in game right away. These new anti-bot systems aren’t limited to gold farmers, however – users of 3rd party clients and botting software are also being aggressively targeted by the newly updated Botwatch.

Last year Jagex introduced Botany Bay, where players can watch first hand as bots are executed and banned.

(Source: RuneScape)

MMOrning Shots: Does Preserving Nostalgia Trump Preventing Scams?

RuneScape’s Old School server has been running for four days now and while the game is looking pretty stable, it isn’t completely up and running. Construction and player owned housing needed to be overhauled and are not currently available, and neither is the Barbarian Assault mini-game or one or two quests. The small team currently assigned to the game is still working on a method to accurately gauge player interest in further updates, with the community divided on whether to implement new updates or keep the game as it was.

Among the changes first implemented, Jagex altered the way herbs work to be less friendly to scams. At the time in which the server existed (August 2007), all herbs looked alike and were simply called “herb” until identified. This confusion generated a specific scam in which players would advertise unidentified herbs as being higher quality than they actually were. In an update in September 2007, Jagex changed herbs to “grimy” versions, allowing players to see what the herb was before actually cleaning it. When old school RuneScape launched last week, it came with the grimy herbs instead of the unidentified versions, prompting a backlash from the community. On Monday, Jagex updated the game to revert the system back to its more scam-friendly version in response to player demand.

Players who argue for unidentified herbs do so on the grounds that players voted for RuneScape as it was in August 2007, and that includes all of its features both good and bad. The players who argued to keep grimy herbs generally do so on the grounds that preventing players from scamming each other is more important than preserving nostalgia. Neither side is wrong, really, the question comes down to priorities. Is it more important for Jagex to preserve the nostalgia of RuneScape as it was on August 10th, 2007, or is it a higher priority to implement updates geared toward preventing unruly behavior, even if that means changing the game? The question then becomes about where the line gets drawn as to what is off limits.

So where do you draw the line? Keep everything as it was, or let the community vote on newer features?

OldScape Vote Passes 250 Thousand, Membership Fee Lowered

Jagex recently launched a poll to gauge interest in the return of classic RuneScape servers, bringing back the old school feel of August 2007. The poll, however, had a catch. Because bringing the servers back and maintaining them costs money, Jagex wanted to get a feeling as to how many people would actually participate in the servers should they launch. So for two weeks, subscribers are asked to vote yes or abstain from voting, with each vote contributing to a number of tiers, which will determine exactly how the service is supported post-launch.

At a minimum, the servers needed fifty thousand votes to launch at all, which the community easily blew through. At fifty thousand, the servers would be brought online with no updates, only critical maintenance, and would cost $15 a month. Luckily, however, the community recently struck through the two hundred fifty thousand vote mark, bringing the membership cost down to $5 with basic maintenance, anti-bot updates, and a small team for ongoing development. That $5 membership is on top of the

Should the community hit five hundred thousand, membership will be free and there will be a dedicated team for ongoing development. The poll runs until March 1st, however you can get on the servers starting today providing you are a RuneScape member and vote in the poll.

(Source: RuneScape Official Website)

OldScape: RuneScape 2007 Server Details

Jagex has run a live Q&A today, focusing on the upcoming 2007 Old School servers.

The servers launch this Friday, the 22nd.
The first month will be free for all of those who voted.
The February 22nd launch is an early access phase and is expected to have bugs.
Free players will only have access if the poll exceeds 500,000.
At the current 213,000, free players don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.
Rares (tradeable discontinued) will not be available.*
Gambling will not be removed*
Chat between the two versions (Current and OldScape) will be compatible.
Holiday events will not be added*
Characters will be separate, however accounts will not be able to log into both simultaneously.

*Barring 500,000 votes which is highly unlikely.

Currently, there are only 214,000 votes for the 2007 Classic servers. If the poll hits 250,000 by the end of the week, players can expect the following perks:

$5 a month subscription
A small team for development.
Basic maintenance.
Possible anti-gold farming updates.

If they do not hit 250,000, players will be expected to shell out $15 a month to access the game, with zero possibilities of updates or anti-gold farming systems.

Jagex Allows Vote For OldScape: Revive RuneScape From Aug '07

Would you pay $15 a month for access to classic RuneScape? No not that far back, we’re talking 2007’ish, before the original trade restrictions were put into place. Well do I have news for you. In a blog post on the RuneScape official website today, Jagex has outlined plans to release a snapshot version of RuneScape dated back to August 2007. Before, well, a whole lot. Just imagine, a RuneScape where Jagex never restricted trade (or nuked bots), where Dungeoneering doesn’t exist, no God Wars or top tier equipment, no grand exchange (auction house), etc. No evolution of combat and no microtransactions.

Want to go back to the nostalgic days? All you have to do is vote.

So, just like the poll for the return of the Wildy & Free Trade, which saw a jaw dropping 1.4 million votes , we will be running a similar poll and letting you – our valued members – decide the fate of ‘Old School RuneScape’, given that you directly fund the game’s ongoing development and supporting services. This decision – along with the level of service, investment and potentially any additional fee for the service – is truly up to you to determine.

The blog post highlights several stages of development depending on how many votes the poll gets, from the bare minimum (50 thousand) where the service comes back as a $15 a month subscription (yikes) and only receives critical maintenance.

At 250,000 votes, the membership fee comes down to $5 and will support a small development team to fix bugs and (hopefully) implement the modern anti-bot technology as best they can.
At half a million votes, the game will have a full development team and no additional costs, as well as some content development and anti-bot technology.
At 750,000 votes, the game will have all of the above plus the free portion available to non-members.

These servers, at any of the above levels, would be the exact version from back in 2007 and would maintain the ‘old school’ vibe and rules. The old graphics, hiscores, log-in, are all part of the same archived build and would be retained. We wouldn’t ever add any micropayment updates.

The poll will be live on February 15th and run for two weeks. Your options are yes, or don’t vote.

(Source: RuneScape Website)

Jagex Allows Vote For OldScape: Revive RuneScape From Aug ’07

scapemas

Want to go back to the nostalgic days? All you have to do is vote.

So, just like the poll for the return of the Wildy & Free Trade, which saw a jaw dropping 1.4 million votes , we will be running a similar poll and letting you – our valued members – decide the fate of ‘Old School RuneScape’, given that you directly fund the game’s ongoing development and supporting services. This decision – along with the level of service, investment and potentially any additional fee for the service – is truly up to you to determine.

At 250,000 votes, the membership fee comes down to $5 and will support a small development team to fix bugs and (hopefully) implement the modern anti-bot technology as best they can.
At half a million votes, the game will have a full development team and no additional costs, as well as some content development and anti-bot technology.
At 750,000 votes, the game will have all of the above plus the free portion available to non-members.

These servers, at any of the above levels, would be the exact version from back in 2007 and would maintain the ‘old school’ vibe and rules. The old graphics, hiscores, log-in, are all part of the same archived build and would be retained. We wouldn’t ever add any micropayment updates.

The poll will be live on February 15th and run for two weeks. Your options are yes, or don’t vote.

(Source: RuneScape Website)

MMOrning Shots: Waiting On A Sinkhole

Today’s MMOrning shot comes from RuneScape. Last week Jagex released sinkholes, where every half hour players are able to join up in random groups of five and explore dungeons with the goal of working together to complete the tasks at hand, while at the same time competing with your team to see who can gain the most points. The NPC in charge of the event will freely teleport players to the location of the sinkhole.

Jagex Invites 24 Hour Idea Blitz

Remember a time when that thing you loved was better than it was now and those guys were not as much as they are now and those problems with the things didn’t exist or weren’t as bad? Jagex remembers, and Mod Mark appeared on the forums to gather suggestions from players as to how they feel RuneScape should move forward, specifically in the realm of moving backward. In a forum thread, Mark asked players for suggestions regarding classic servers, pre-Evolution of Combat servers, reintroduction of old, phased out content, and more. The server was open for 24 hours, and unfortunately is closed as of this writing with 224 pages of feedback.

It’s been a fascinating read, and everyone has their own opinion on what was good, bad, ugly or epic about older versions of the game. Right now, we’re looking into all of your comments, suggestions and ideas: specifically about combat, both old and new. Were committed to making this year something special, and we really want look into those ideas that you feel most strongly about.

Jagex will be going into some detail about the ideas presented in an upcoming Q&A session on February 20th.

(Source: RuneScape Forums)

Jagex: What's Coming And Going

Jagex seems to do a whole lot of apologizing, whether it is for the lacking infrastructure, your bot-detection software banning legitimate players, the enormous resources squandered on “hobby projects,” lacking basic security to prevent unauthorized purchases, and playing vigilante justice against the operator of a fan site.

Mark Gerhard has posted an announcement on the RuneScape website detailing how Jagex plans to move forward in several areas of communication. For starters, they recognize that players were not informed properly that Botany Bay, Jagex’s bot busting tool, was meant to be introduced into the game gradually, learning about how bots act in order to learn how they operate and eventually be able to catch them automatically. To compensate for the heavy rise in gold farmers, and due to Botany Bay not being fully implemented for a good while yet, Gerhard announced that several parallel bot-busting programs will be coming in 2013.

On the topic of micro-transactions, Gerhard is unapologetic. The money that Squeal of Fortune and Solomon’s Store have brought to RuneScape has allowed Jagex to double the size of the RuneScape development team, allowing the company to tackle big issues regarding infrastructure and improving the game’s audio and visual quality. He does admit, however, that the two cash shops virtually dominated the release schedule, often times bringing in content that felt completely out of context in the game’s environment. Gerhard also admits that Jagex went overboard in 2012 with promotions, giving away far too much with promotions like Sizzling Summer. Promotions in 2013 will be less frequent, and do less to undermine player achievement.

Overall, 2012 had some pretty dramatic changes to RuneScape’s foundation, something which Jagex hopes to continue into 2013. Jagex plans to introduce two new skills, a number of more meaningful quests, temporary events, as well as improving the engine to allow multi-core support as well as porting the engine to HTML 5 and more. Gerhard ended the letter with a sign of gratitute towards the community:

I don’t believe we’ve ever actually thanked our members for helping us to make RuneScape into the incredible game it is today, not to mention providing a completely free game for millions of players. So, a very big ‘thank you’ to our members from myself, the RS team and the free community.

Jagex: What’s Coming And Going

I don’t believe we’ve ever actually thanked our members for helping us to make RuneScape into the incredible game it is today, not to mention providing a completely free game for millions of players. So, a very big ‘thank you’ to our members from myself, the RS team and the free community.

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