_The Endless Road To Advancement - Day 2

_Table of Contents

1 | Introduction

2 | Weekly Goals

3 | Articles

4 | Blog Entries

5 | Final Words

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_Introduction

Slightly frustrated I hit the escape button and clicked the red "Exit Game" button that popped up on my screen. World of Warcraft took it's time to close down. The game I've enjoyed for more than 2 years suddenly lost all of it's touch. World of Warcraft used to be all I did with my spare time if I wasn't hanging with friend, so I was bored out of my mind within minutes.I started to browse the Internet pointlessly in the hope of finding something to do.I stumbled across an USB-missile launcher. You had to connect it to your computer and then you could control it with your keyboard and fire foam missiles at your colleagues.The description explained how it would give you the leading edge in your office's arms race that had me chuckling for the next 5 minutes. It was then that I remembered the fun I had playing Runesape and how I enjoyed the most pointless and hilarious conversations you'd encounter there... Continued in "Blog Entries"

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_Weekly Goals

Financial

Earn 1 million GP

Skills

Get 70 mining

These goals are to be completed on the 26th of December

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_Blog Entries

[hide=19/12/2007 - Been a long time]

Almost automatically I typed in http://www.runescape.com. I don't even want to know how often I've typed that address, but judging by the speed of which I typed it, it must have been a lot. A minute later I was deciding how I wanted my freshly created character to look like, and I was pleasantly surprised to see some new cloth and hair models were available. Eventually I made up my mind and created a mighty fine male character. The Runescape Guide greeted me and starting firing his story. 20 minutes of repetitive tutorial island boredom followed. I still remembered every single task I was told to complete so I barely even read any of the dialogues. Finally I talked to the Magic Tutor who offered to teleport me to Lumbridge.

Snow. Upon arriving I saw huge piles of snow, small snowmen armies led bij a snowman wearing Dragon armor, and a bunch of people throwing snowballs at each other's head. I couldn't resist and just had to join in for a free-for-all-snow-rumble. Half a hour and a couple of laughs later I entered lumbridge's castle to aid the Duke. The quest he offered involved traveling to the Wizard's tower and Varrock, where I almost got slaughtered by an angry level 20 Dark Wizard.After completing "Rune Mysteries" I went to mine a bunch of Rune Essence.While mining a level 49 wearing adamant armor came up to the large mountain of rune essence. Almost instantly he greeted me: "Hey noob". I got really annoyed by the fact he greeted me with an insult, while he had no reason to whatsoever. I simply stood there mining."Hello to you too.", I answered. The reaction I got was a simple "lol". I guess I'd better get used to rude people like him, especially while I'm in free to play. I didn't get discouraged by him though and continued mining this magical gold. My bronze pickaxe needed to be replaced, so I hopped over to the Grand Exchange. Selling rune essence had never been so easy, it took me a mere 5 minutes to sell all my essence and buy a mithril and adamant pickaxe. I pretty much spent the rest of the day mining and logged of after reaching level 29.

My character and the fruits of my labor

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_Articles

[hide=#1 - Real World Trading ]

While watching my character use the same animation over and over again while tediously mining rune essence to fund my future goals, my mind tends to drift off. Occasionaly, I stumble across a Runescape related thought I find worth looking at.With all the commotion it has gotten recently, I couldn't resist having a think about Real World Trading (RWT). Real World Trading involves "trading" in-game items, currency, or services for Real World items, currency or services. It's frowned upon by every MMORPG developer and most of the game's players. I decided to take a look at it without any preconceptions.

Pro

In order to sell in-game services, you have to offer them. It's possible to do this on small scale by yourself, but sooner or later, in order to get bigger, the company has to hire more laborers. The majority of people active in the RWT industry live in East-Asian countries. A lot of people suffer from poverty in these countries, especially those who aren't able to do physical labor, so the possibility to do light (physical) work is more than welcome. This is exactly what RWT offers. You have the possibility to sit behind a computer, doing easy (repetitive) actions. No education's required and most physical handicaps won't affect your prestations.

RWT offers those who are too busy to spend a lot of time in the game themselves an easy way to still advance in the game. I'm sure a lot of you wouldn't define this as "fun", but for some it's an easy way to push through the leveling they don't enjoy. Personally, I think the leveling's worth it. You'll never have the same feeling of accomplishment as those who've done it all theirselves.

Con

I'm sure we've all seen macroers. Characters played by a programme, programmed only to collect as much money or to provide services in the shortest amount of time. These little buggers have the ability to change a game's entire economy, and they're more than frustrating for legit players. Macroers have the ability to control whole armies of characters at the same time, making it possible for them to gather an immense amount of items. This is all causes inflation, which is one of the worst things that can happen.

Inflation has been proven to cause major changes to a the value of a certain currency or item. A simple real-world example would be Germany. In 1919, Germany had to sign a peace treaty know as the "Treaty of Versailles". Germany had lost World War one, and had no other choice but to sign this ridiculous document. This document stated Germany had to pay convalescence payments for the damage they've caused. The amount was staggering, and a crisis soon followed. Germany decided to simply print more Mark (Germany's currency at that time) in order to prevent this economical crisis. The result? The price of a kilogram bread:

December 1921: 4 Mark

November 1923: 201.000.000.000 Mark

As you can see, the currency dropped in value dramatically. This applies to runescape too. Let's take for example the price of sharks.I'm sure some remember them being worth 1k a piece. The price dropped to 700-800gp a piece once the macroers discovered the money that could be made with them. They started fishing collosal amounts of sharks which caused the price to drop, resulting in the legit shark fishers to be virtually out of business.

My conclusion to this all would be that RWT provides a source of income for some East-Asian countries. It also offers enjoyment to the customers. It does however, affect the game negatively due to inflation. Legit players are greatly affected by this all and put to a disadvantage.Therefor I believe MMORPG developers should do what they can do to counter RWT as much as possible. Some of the measures Jagex has taken greatly affect the game for legit-players - Both positively and negatively. Some enjoyable aspects such as Staking are no more to some. Still I think these changes were all needed, although I can't say I'm too happy about all of them. It's something we must all get used to for the sake of the game. Sooner or later alternatives will come to what's been lost. In the meantime, we can always enjoy mining some rune essence while drifting off.

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_Final words

I hope you've enjoyed reading my blog.Make sure to check back regularly if you did, cause I will update often.Also, feel free to comment or to add me in-game. My private chat is always on.

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Love the blog layout

Good luck with your goals, 70 mining and 1mil gp will be no problem with you! \

Thanks - It took me quite some time to get the lay-out to meet the style I wanted. but I'm really satisfied with the result.

Small update:

I managed to get level 41 mining at the end of day 2. I've also sold some rune essence and iron ore, giving me a net worth of 200k. Not too shabby for 2 days!I'm going to combine day 2 and 3 in one blog entry to since I won't have enough to write about otherwise. Make sure to check back tomorrow for it :D

Free bump

200k on first 2 days? *cough*Im a wannabe you now :-w *cough*

Your doing great, keep going \ \

Wow, I love your layout. Very original. =D>

I like your attitude and your article, it seems very thought out and well written. Good luck with your goals and well done on getting richer than I've been for the past month in 2 days! Good luck mining. :wink:

No day 2+3? :ohnoes:

I want to see a big update please \

wow nice read.

good luck on the mining, i for one, hate the skiull with passion :oops: