TruthScape.com

Acknowledgments The TruthScape Soapbox - Issue #1 - Words Can Kill

In addition to having a great deal of knowledge and practical information about RuneScape that I’m in the process of documenting here on this site, I also have many opinions and comments that I want to share with you. Unlike many other sites, TruthScape is completely independent, which makes it an essential source for hearing the unvarnished truth about controversial issues. I always endeavor to be fair and to base my views on facts and evidence, while having no qualms about tackling serious issues head on.

Some of the editorials in this section, which I am calling issues and numbering sequentially, will be simple comments about RuneScape gameplay. Others will delve into deeper issues, ranging from game design to community problems to the greater RuneScape community and beyond. I hope that you will find these articles worthy of your time, even if you don’t agree with everything I have to say.

Here are the Soapbox issues at present, and I will be continuing to add many more in the coming weeks:

• Issue #1 - Words Can Kill (November 17, 2007): The tragic story of Megan Meier teaches us that online cruelty can have devastating real world consequences. It’s time for everyone to stop pretending that what we say and do online is “only the Internet”, and start treating the others we deal with like the real human beings that they are.
  
  
• Issue #2 - Curing the Disease by Killing the Patient (November 21, 2007): Jagex’s recent emphasis on making draconian changes to RuneScape in an effort to stop real world trading seems to have reached new and ridiculous heights with the company’s decision to effectively remove staking from the game. In the context of this update, I explore the much larger problem of Jagex’s reactionary changes meant to stop cheating, which cause great harm to innocent customers while not really solving the problems they aim to fix.
  
  
• Issue #3 - Sorry, Comrade, but Price Controls Don’t Work (November 26, 2007): The new Grand Exchange is finally here, promising the easiest trading ever in the world of RuneScape. In my testing, I found that the feature itself works well enough, but its usefulness has been severely crippled by Jagex’s decision to use the new marketplace as a vehicle for imposing price controls.
  
  
• Issue #4 - I Have the Right to Remain Silent (November 30, 2007): You just want to fish or mine or kill dragons in peace and quiet so you turn off your public chat and play. No problem right? Wrong. The ongoing obsession that some have with finding “bots” is creating the incredible situation where legitimate players are accused of being cheats just for minding their own business silently.
  
  
• Issue #5 - It’s Not Too Late to Save the Patient (December 10, 2007): Today, Jagex made dramatic, historic changes to RuneScape that show how serious the company is about stopping real world trading. Unfortunately, Jagex’s decision to effectively eliminate direct player trading also means that many honest players will be severely affected along with the bots and gold sellers. I admire Jagex’s principled stance, but I also hope that the company is willing to make modifications to improve the ability of its paying customers to get through these changes. In this important editorial, I overview the issue, describe what the problems are, and provide many constructive recommendations for improvement.
  
  
• Issue #6 - Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish (December 11, 2007): In yesterday’s article, I pointed out many of the problems with Jagex’s game updates, which curtail real world trading but also make it hard for honest players to enjoy the game. Today, I want to look at how these changes have the potential to greatly improve the RuneScape community, mainly by encouraging many of its less desirable members to go elsewhere.
  
  
• Issue #7 - The Doctrine of Estoppel (December 13, 2007): While 90% of RuneScape is busy arguing over the merits of the radical changes occurring to the game to combat real world trading, Jagex is quietly performing a purge of accounts with “offensive usernames”. The company is not just removing new accounts with truly insulting monikers, though—it is terminating accounts with very marginal usernames that have been played by veteran gamers for years, in a move that I find more offensive than any derogatory label could possibly be.
  
  
• Issue #8 - A Lack of Communication, A Lack of Respect (January 2, 2008): The decision by Jagex to eliminate “unbalanced trades”, starting today, effectively forces RuneScape players to use the Grand Exchange instead. Yet, despite the newfound importance of that feature, Jagex has so far made none of the necessary changes to its incorrect prices and restrictive features, even after receiving useful feedback from thousands of players over a span of five and a half weeks. Perhaps even worse, the company apparently doesn’t seem to respect its customers enough to even tell us what its plans are for this market mechanism that we now have no choice but to use.
  
  
• Issue #9 - Would You Like That on a Silver Platter? (January 18, 2008): RuneScape's newest skill, Summoning, is interesting, multidimensional, complex and one that requires a lot of thought and consideration to get the most from. Which means that, naturally, many RuneScape players are trying to do everything they can to get Jagex to turn it into yet another boring, one-dimensional, overly-simplified skill-as if we didn't have enough of those already! In this article I explain why some of the complaints about this new skill are misguided, and why it’s far too early to draw any conclusions about it.
  
  
• Issue #10 - Requiem for a Chompy Bird Hunter (January 30, 2008): The rewards from the new quest As a First Resort... are so overpowered and unbalancing that they undermine at least a dozen skills, items and activities. Was the game balance team just asleep at the wheel again, or is this a deliberate effort to ply unhappy players with short-term goodies, regardless of the effects?
  
  
• Issue #11 - Please Don’t Resent My Toilet (February 26, 2008): No reasonable person would suggest that we should do without modern conveniences just because our great-grandparents didn’t have them, yet this is the attitude that some older and higher-level RuneScape players appear to have. This time the issue is the new, revised Farming minigame Vinesweeper; now that Jagex has updated it so that it’s actually worth playing, all the usual stuff about skills being “ruined” and so forth is starting again. In this article I’ll show you why it’s a load of nonsense.

Acknowledgments The TruthScape Soapbox - Issue #1 - Words Can Kill