TruthScape.com - RuneScape 2007 Year in Review and Report Card - Jagex Policy Issues, Rule Changes and Related Game Updates

While the updates I covered in the previous topics of this report were organized mainly by what area of the game they affected, this one is a bit different. Here I have gathered together a number of updates that have in common not the manner in which they change the game, but rather the motivation behind them: these are updates related to Jagex policies and rules. Due to that important distinction, the entries here include some of the most important, and controversial, changes of the year, especially the ones related to fighting real world trading (RWT).

The updates in this section run the gamut, from ill-advised policy change attempts that were later reversed, to minor tweaks to correct game problems, and finally, all the way to the major, game-changing updates of November and December. For some of the simple changes I give a single grade as I did for the updates in other sections. For more complex updates I provided two grades, one assessing the initial update and how Jagex handled the change, and a second, final grade based on how (and if) the company followed through and tweaked the change based on feedback.

I should also point out, in case it isn’t obvious, that the worthiness of most of these changes really depends on one’s perspective and in-game values. My own personal ethics are no secret; my emphasis on honesty, fairness, respect and reasonable gameplay are on display throughout this site, and have necessarily guided my reactions to Jagex’s policy changes as well.

Jagex started 2007 off with a bang—unfortunately, the sound was caused by the company proverbially shooting itself in the foot. J The Jagex braintrust decided to unilaterally extend Rule 7 to cover third-party RuneScape clients, clearly not realized just what a large percentage of its customer base used them. Of course, the reason third-party clients were so popular is that the Jagex client was missing key features, like group chat and the ability to quickly switch worlds. Rather than implementing those features so that people didn’t want to use third-party clients, Jagex tried to take the easy way out by forcing people to use only its software.

As we all know, it backfired miserably, leading to an enormous howling uproar from players. Jagex, to its credit, reversed the decision almost immediately, and promised to implement updates to the game to allow faster world switching and clan communication, which it followed through with. While the initial decision was awful, there was no real damage done, and this might have gone a long way towards motivating Jagex to add some essential features we now enjoy.

It took far too long, but on this date Jagex finally got rid of the infamous leaf-bladed spear scam by making it and several other items untradeable.

One day in February, a friend alerted me to a “sticky” thread in the RuneScape forums that had been posted by a Jagex employee. In that thread, the J mod explained that it was Jagex’s position that luring players into the Wilderness to be killed was “not against the rules of the game”. And so began what I consider to be easily the darkest chapter in Jagex’s history.

The decision to legalize dishonest and unethical behavior came as a giant slap in the face to the long-standing members of the community who had always made an effort towards positive gameplay. To make matters worse, Jagex didn’t make an open, public announcement about this new policy—it was only posted in the PKing forum, where people who engaged in luring hung out. The potential victims were never told that they were now fair game for scammers, and the forum moderators silenced any effort to inform them. Only reluctantly was a single discussion on the subject allowed, and that was buried in a little-used forum where nobody would see it. It was a blatant cover-up.

The company’s attempt to rationalize its unethical decision was preposterous and insulting, boiling down to little more than a “blame the victim” mentality. Many high-level players and even many player moderators and forum moderators strongly protested this incredibly crass policy decision and the way it was handled. For my part, I was outraged—I even got the only suspension from the RuneScape forums I’ve ever received, due to my irritation at the stonewalling by Jagex employees and kowtowing by clueless forum mods (see Figure 68 for an example of what I mean)

**Figure 68: Talk to the Wall**
Once word started to get around about Jagex’s decision to legalize luring, myself and a few other ethical players devoted many hours of our time to trying to make Jagex understand that its position was unfair and contradicted its own stated goals for the game. All we seemed to get for our trouble was denials, rationalizations, stonewalling and circular reasoning, the reply shown here being perhaps the perfect example! Fortunately, in the end the company saw reason and reversed this ridiculous ruling.

This attempt to legalize luring was the triggering event that spurred me to go public with a two-part series on the problems within RuneScape called RuneScape Exposed Part 1 and Part 2, and eventually led me to create TruthScape.

On March 29—three days after my first RuneScape Exposed article, which is perhaps a coincidence and perhaps not—Jagex finally saw the error of its ways and formally reversed the decision, saying that the earlier decision was a “bad idea”. What they did not do, however, is explain why they even tried to do this in the first place. They also did not see fit to apologize to all the players who were abused for opposing the initial decision, nor those who got “legally” scammed as a result of the move.

This controversial update added a physical barrier to separate the Wilderness from the rest of the game. It was strongly supported by anti-scamming and anti-luring activists such as myself, strongly opposed by scammers and lurers (and those who rationalize such behaviors), and mildly opposed by some PKers and Runecrafters.

The ditch instantly eliminated several classes of annoying lures and bug exploits from the game. While I concede that it is a bit of a hassle to those going frequently into the Wild, that minor inconvenience is, in my mind, strongly outweighed by the positives of the ditch. And when Jagex later implemented its warning system feature that allowed players to stop seeing the Wilderness warning, this made the ditch even less of an issue for legitimate players.

One of the oldest account scams in the book used to involve a player trying to trick another into saying his or her password in public chat; this would then be used to steal that account. Jagex finally decided to change the filters to block players from saying their passwords.

This was a simple but useful update that deters scammers and harms nobody. I saw no opposition from it except from those who engaged in scamming, as well as a handful of twisted sociopaths who had the audacity to argue that the update was bad because they were in favor of having “stupid people” get scammed (hi SW! J).

On the same day that Jagex expanded the number of rooms one could have in a player owned house, the company also finally acted to prevent house lures. Code was added so that if you are damaged in a house by any means, that damage is restored when you leave. This simple change eliminated a set of awful non-Wilderness lures that had made a mockery of Jagex’s claims that “player owned houses are safe”.

This was another long-overdue update that finally eliminated some of the most common trade-related scams from RuneScape. The most important change was the addition of very visible warnings when a player removes items from a trade offer. I think the alterations could have been a little better in terms of implementation, but overall they were extremely useful.

This update saw the elimination of mystery “unidentified herbs” from the game, with every herb now clearly labeled as to its type and called either “clean” or “grimy”. Instead of identifying herbs obtained from drops, you instead clean them, getting the same XP as before. Farming was also changed to provide grimy herbs, giving those who grow them a little bonus Herblore XP as well. At the same time, unfinished potions were also changed to indicate what type of herb was within the vial.

The change was primarily made because of the huge amount of scamming that surrounded unidentified herbs (unfinished potions were much less popular). I feel that the change was a good one, overall, because having people try to trade large quantities of what are effectively mystery items is not a good idea. And even though there were some “anti-scam” measures that players could take, they were definitely not foolproof for certain types of transactions.

The downside of the update is that it eliminated one means of Herblore training that had been previous used extensively by some players. On the whole, though, I think the change was justified.

This was the first of the controversial updates that Jagex was willing to admit to being part of its effort to combat real world trading. A cap was placed on the amount of gold or item value any player can win at the arena: just 3,000 coins worth every 15 minutes. Considering that the prior limit had been infinity, this was a rather severe restriction, which Jagex justified on the basis of cheaters who had been using staged duels to transfer in-game items and gold for real world money.

Naturally, this update didn’t exactly go over well with anyone who used the duel arena for staking. The limit of 3,000 coins was (and still is) far more severe than it had to be just to stop RWT. Many folks felt it was stupid to put in such tight restrictions when other ways of RWT were still possible, a problem Jagex exacerbated by not being upfront about the fact that this was just the initial step in a serious of efforts to fight RWT.

My initial reaction was disbelief that Jagex would choose to fight RWT done via staking by effectively killing off staking; I made my case in Soapbox Issue #2. I suspected that Jagex wanted to not only get rid of RWT but also do something about the gambling problems that many high-end stakers have developed, though the company denies this motivation.

Jagex partially justified the elimination of staking (3k is not a real stake) by saying players could use the dueling tournament minigame instead. Unfortunately, that minigame was, and still is, riddled with problems that make it a poor substitute for straight one-on-one duels. The 3k limit was always far lower than what was needed just to stop RWT, and yet has not been revised. Jagex has recently indicated that it may change the staking cap to allow more reasonable, limited one-on-one staking, so I will leave the jury out, figuratively, until we see what the company chooses to do.

In another update aimed at stopping real world trading, Jagex changed the party room to impose time delays on high-valued drop parties, and programmed NPCs to call out when parties were going on. They even went so far as to have bankers all around RuneScape offer free teleports to the party room if the value of the items to be dropped exceeds 1 million gold.

This measure stopped the party room from being used for RWT, but also effectively killed off private or clan drop parties entirely. The NPCs calling out parties are also extremely annoying, given that they spam the announcements every few seconds.

There’s still a chance that this update will be tweaked in the future, so I am giving the benefit of the doubt and not assigning a final grade here—though I concede that I am not hopeful.

Another way Jagex chose to fight real world trading was to make it impossible to transfer items between players by dropping them on the ground. This was not only (ab)used by those buying gold for real life money, but by cheaters who transferred large amounts of wealthy between characters in violation of rule 8. Despite “drop trading” always being illegal, it was done so often that thousands of players didn’t even realize it was against the rules.

This change not only plugged a RWT hole, it finally put an end to drop trading once and for all.

The introduction of gravestones that hold players’ items when they die was yet another anti-RWT measure meant to prevent a form of “indirect drop trading”. To the extent that this was Jagex’s goal, the update succeeded; however, the gravestones really go far beyond stopping RWT. Since they make it possible for a player to retrieve his or her items for 5 minutes unassisted or up to an hour with the help of a friend, this update also changes a fundamental game mechanism: the so-called “death penalty” of losing items when you die.

I have very mixed feelings about this change. On the one hand, I like knowing that if I mess up fighting a tough monster that I can go back and get my stuff instead of losing it. On the other hand, I don’t like the fact that this really eliminates much of the risk associated with fighting those same monsters.

I believe that part of the motivation for allowing people to go back to get their gear is to compensate for the fact that in team activities, players can no longer pick up dropped items if a teammate dies. I think, however, that the feature needs to be tweaked to bring some more risk back to risky activities.

The most dramatic and controversial of all of the RWT-related changes in late 2007 was the complete transformation of the Wilderness and “the end of PKing as we knew it” in RuneScape. On December 10, Jagex removed the ability of players to attack each other at will in the Wilderness, restricting PvP activity in the Wild to two organized new feature areas: Bounty Hunter (for unsafe PKing) and Clan Wars (for safe group battles.) It then implemented monsters called revenants to roam the Wild and keep it dangerous.

These changes have significantly altered many of the fundamentals of the game, and have elicited negative reactions on the part of most players, positive reactions by some, and left very few on the fence. Below I break down the main changes here and provide my assessment of them. As with all the recent anti-RWT updates, Jagex has promised changes in the future, so the jury remains out on all of this for the time being.

While the Wilderness change was said to be fundamentally about fighting real world trading, some of its aspects clearly have nothing to do with RWT. While Jagex was reworking PKing, it took the opportunity to finally separate those who are interested in unrestricted PvP combat from those who don’t like it.

I, for one, feel this is a welcome change. I always detested how Jagex continued to put game content in the Wild simply to entice players to enter the area to provide “fodder” for PKers. Those who want to engage in PvP are now limited to only fighting others with the same interest, which is how it should be.

When Jagex removed PKing from the Wilderness as a whole, it replaced it with two specific PvP features, Bounty Hunter and Clan Wars, which I described in the topic on new minigames. The problem is that these were really not very well designed and planned out, especially Bounty Hunter. Even though, as I said, I am glad that PKers are finally no longer able to attack those who do not want to PK, they should have a full-featured, high-quality replacement for what they used to have, and Bounty Hunter isn’t it.

The ghosts that now roam the Wilderness, called revenants, are supposed to maintain game balance by keeping activities like fighting green dragons or using the Abyss dangerous. They are a neat bit of programming, intended to emulate how PKers used to behave—they can attack with all three combat styles, block you from teleporting, poison, heal themselves and even freeze you in place.

The problem with them is simply that they are too difficult. Once again, this comes down to poor understanding on the part of game developers, and insufficient testing by those familiar with the game. Even though a good PKer was always dangerous before, human players tended to only behave in certain ways and tended to congregate in certain areas; through experience one could learn to avoid or deal with them. There were also well-known places where PKers just never went. That is not the case with revenants, which pop up anywhere (see Figure 69) and always attack on sight, making the entire Wilderness far more dangerous than it used to be. On F2P matters are even worse, because Jagex gave the revenants attacks that no player ever had the ability to use (like freezing and teleblocking).

**Figure 69: Even at the Earth Warriors?!**
Revenants are supposed to “simulate” PKers, but a major problem is that they are *everywhere*. I can’t recall the earth warriors in the Edgeville Dungeon being a spot that PKers ever bothered to hang out, but the revenants are certainly around.

Now, some would say that if revenants make the Wild more dangerous than it was before that this is a good thing. Well, fine—if Jagex wanted to make the Wild more deadly, then the company could have just said so! But if these monsters were supposed to just simulate the dangers previously posed by PKers, they need to be toned down.

PKing as it had existed before the December updates had led to the proliferation of one of the very worst subcultures in the game. On the whole, PKers engaged in far more verbal abuse, cheating and other undesirable behaviors than any other single group in the game. It was nearly impossible for a regular player to PK anyway, because the Wilderness was overrun with players who were incapable of even understanding the concept of a fair fight.

Were all PKers bad players? Certainly not. But the community as a whole was in desperate need of a shake-up. Now that many of its worst elements have responded to the updates by rioting and then quitting, many good players are already noticing how much fresher the air seems.

At the same time that nearly everyone in RuneScape was dealing with the huge changes associated with Jagex’s anti-RWT effort, the company was quietly undertaking a purge of players with accounts having allegedly “offensive” usernames. These weren’t new accounts, though—in many cases the targeted players had been building their characters for five years. They were given the option to start a new character from scratch and be granted a one-time allowance to transfer items over to that new account, along with a couple of months’ worth of free membership. So while they could keep their wealth, they lost all of their skills and completed quests.

Why wait five years to take action on these accounts? Nobody knows. Why not just rename accounts that the company considered offensive? Jagex isn’t saying, but it’s been implied by some that they “can’t”. Apparently we are expected to believe that programmers who can make a game that handles 200,000 simultaneous users across 100+ servers and runs in Java using ordinary browsers, cannot figure out any way to rename a player’s account, or create a duplicate account with the same statistics and a different name. Sure.To make matters worse, many of the names weren’t offensive at all unless someone was trying to be offended. And of course, they did this all without any announcement, and with discussion of it prohibited on the RuneScape forums in typical cover-up fashion.

The company’s total lack of regard for loyal, long-term players pissed me off enough that I wrote a Soapbox piece that discusses the matter thoroughly. I’ve heard rumors that they may yet back off on this nonsense, so we’ll see what happens.