TruthScape.com  9  The Truth About TruthScape - An Introduction

What is TruthScape About? Why I Disagree with Jagex's Policy of Hiding Information on Scams and Lures

I created TruthScape for a simple reason: nobody else had. I have two primary goals for the site: education and change.

Education is required about RuneScape because there are so many players who enter the game effectively blind about its real nature. They are told all about its positive attributes—of which they are many—but not the negative ones. Most of what is on this site is information that I feel is absolutely essential to be out in the public so players can learn from it, but it's not available in an organized, clear, complete manner elsewhere on the Internet.

Jagex Limited, the owners and operators of RuneScape, run a Knowledge Base that does have a lot of practical material in it about how to play the game. Unfortunately, the less pleasant aspects of RuneScape are glossed over or omitted entirely. The company paints a rosy, largely naïve picture of what the game is like, which leaves new players (especially younger ones) totally unprepared for what they face once they start playing. In addition, the Parents' Guide that Jagex provides is more a marketing brochure for the game than a realistic portrayal of it, so it is difficult for them to make informed choices for their children and teens.

I was prompted to act by reading countless stories like this one, which I found on the RuneScape forums just as I was writing this topic:

“My son was invited into a player owned house to fight in the basement. When he was down there, they asked him to fight someone while he did the strength-cape emote. My son had then only 3 hp left with full dharok, and they started to attack him while they kicked him out of the house, which meant that he died for real outside the house and lost his stuff. They then took his stuff.
…
He lost his helm and 200k and dds, but he was completely in shock, cause you are not supposed to die inside a house. And he cried for hours. If the guide says you wont die, that must be true, or else we must change the guide to warn ppl not to bring valuable stuff into the houses.”

Scams like this are not a rare occurrence; it has become routine, largely because players don't know to watch out for it. (Fortunately, this particular scam was finally eliminated by Jagex in July 2007, a good year after it first showed up.) Most players simply have nowhere to turn to learn about these issues. The only readily accessible venue for players to share information scams and other problems is the official forums run by Jagex. Unfortunately, very strict rules on those forums make it impossible for most of the critical information on this site to be communicated. All discussions of player activities, scams, lures, account security breaches and other negative aspects are prohibited, and threads about them are locked and/or hidden-that's what happened to the story above.

My second goal for the site is that it will hopefully lead to changes in how Jagex runs RuneScape, and the information that they make officially available. As Jagex has grown, the company has become less responsive and sympathetic to the complaints of many players and parents. It has also become, in my view and the views of many others, arrogant in its attitude towards those who want to see serious issues fixed. Many problems that could be fairly easily fixed remain unresolved for months or years, while lower priority changes like graphical improvements continue. My hope is that going public with some of these issues will help Jagex realize how important they are, and spur them to take action.

(Edit, April 24, 2007: Jagex has embarked on a new program of improving security and safety measures of late, which I am very happy about. While I cannot claim to take credit for this, I do hope that TruthScape had at least a little to do with the company’s decision to make important rule changes and technical changes to stop scams and lures.)

In addition to my primary goals, I am also using the site as a place to document some of the advanced knowledge I’ve accumulated as a RuneScape player. My hope is that this will help broaden the appeal of the site and balance its tone and content.

What is TruthScape About? Why I Disagree with Jagex's Policy of Hiding Information on Scams and Lures