quitthegame

How does people having more items and money now than they used to prove that the value of gp relative to items has dropped? Your argument is not relevant to that conclusion. That's not a backlash. If the inflation causes the economy to shrink, that's a problem. In the US, the dollar has averaged something like 4% a year inflation over the past 100 years, yet the economy has grown at a very high rate over the past 100 years. There's no backlash there. If inflation had been 30% a year, and the economy had grown at the same rate, then what's the problem with the inflation? You need to show a more concrete problem resulting from the inflation to be able to use the term backlash. Well they do limit the amounts of items by changing drop rates... which is good. There are already built in controls for inflation in the game. The more gp in the game, the more people will buy from vendors which eliminates gp from the game. The more gp is in the game, the more likely it is that people will use methods that favor xp/time instead of xp/gp. I have yet to see an analysis of inflation that attempts to give a good prediction for how those factors work.

"inevetably there is a constant increase with money and product." if that were true, it would be fine since money and products would be balanced. inflation is when money supply increases faster than the amount of product. "Meaning that prices drop and Jagex continually bring out new armour and weapons to subdue inflation." inflation = prices rising, not dropping. Also, Jagex clearly brings out new armor and weapons to keep people interested in the game, not out of some desire to affect inflation as a whole. I don't have any idea what kam42 was getting at either, so that's 3 for 3.

I don't agree that it had the guts ripped out of it by a mod. To me, personal attacks and flaming are not the guts of the thread, discussion about content is the guts of the thread. I also don't agree that the thread is a dead horse because the flaming was removed, nor do I agree that responding to people who make comments is attempting to get them to argue with me. I am sorry that our viewpoints differ Hugh, but I don't believe that we should stop discussion every time viewpoints differ. If we remain civil in our comments, we can learn from our differences. If we all had exactly the same viewpoints, there wouldn't be much to talk about.

I'm sorry that you perceive me asking you to stop being insulting as me trying to pick a fight with you. There's really not much else to say. " Runescape has clearly been designed to be very similar to real life in a lot of ways, and quite different in other ways. Your description above is an oversimplification. Also, I don't understand why you are going through all this effort just to show that my analogy wasn't "strong". I used it to be funny and illustrative, not to support the Golden Gate Bridge. Part of the point of the analogy, was to show how the wilderness is not actually "anything goes", but has a large number of rules and restrictions. The other point was to show how some people find it beneficial to add even more rules to the wilderness to make their gameplay more fun, even though those rules are not strongly enforceable on others-- just as people do in the real world. Certainly laws are more enforceable than honor codes, but honor codes exist in the real world also, and even laws aren't absolutely enforceable. I'm just kinda rewording things that have all been said in the article here... one more thing. I'm not actually doing that. You can tell because my next sentence isn't "Well RS is exactly like earth so unless you want to be cavemen, get an honor code"; it's "What does this fanciful example show us about RuneScape? " See why I'm not distressed by you saying the analogy isn't strong? It's a fanciful example, not a pillar of logic.

"nonexistant concept" is quite a nutty oxymoron, I congratulate you on that. I could ponder that for hours on end. Descartes meets LongestMile= "I think that I don't exist, therefore I am a figment of my own imagination" :-k Anyways, you are correct in that this frustration is undoubtedly what spurred the creation of this code of honor. However, it seems likely to me that frustration spurred about 90% of all inventions. Most inventions you read about these days start with the inventor saying "I was really frustrated because I couldn't do this, so... " or "I wanted to do X but no one sold a device that could do that, so I made one myself" It's only common sense, if you're not frustrated, you don't try to change things. That simply isn't true. When I played WoW, it was more 'honorable' to let someone heal up before fighting them, than to attack them while the monster was still fighting them. I found that the majority of people were honorable near the start of the game, and as time went by and the demographics of the game changed, it became less and less honorable. Also, in battlegrounds, there were constant debates as to what was more or less honorable. Afking out of BGs, turtling, gy camping, all kinds of stuff.

Hey I feel the love! Your point about thieving is basically that the real world is different than RS, so the analogy doesn't work. That isn't a good argument-- if RS weren't different than the real world, you wouldn't need analogies, as they would be the same thing! The analogy only requires that both are environments in which individuals form emergent social units. People that actually steal obviously have a personal moral code that allows stealing. Since stealing is fairly common, then moral codes that allow stealing are also common. Not that this is relevant to my analogy, but it's interesting. If you want academic moral codes instead of personal moral codes, than off the top of my head i can think of egoism, relativism, amoralism, utilitarianism(sometimes), justice based systems (sometimes). The list goes on I'm sure. Imagine if RS were fully fleshed out to where there were realistic penalties for thieving, and meaningful rewards for good citizenship--where the npc's had personalities vivid enough so that you felt guilty about stealing from them, and the economy of the npc's was affected by thieving. That'd be pretty awesome, eh? Since it's not like that, thieving in RS is kinda analogous to stealing salt from the sea in real life :shame: i know, horrible isn't it? Oh, or games where you can steal from other player characters. I remember one MMO where you could pick a thief class and steal from player characters, one thief stole an incredible amount of money that a guild was going to use to build an entire city. That would certainly turn world 2 fally into an empty wasteland :P Which includes forming emergent social units that attempt to demarcate certain areas of the game as their special areas, right? You are free to ignore their attempts or work against them, and they are free to call you a noob afterwards, right? It continues to bewilder me that people make this claim of yours without really meaning it. That's actually kinda similar to people insisting that a moral code should limit the actions of other people in the real world, but that's been in style for quite a long time, hasn't it? Killing other ppl in the wildy is just friendly competition of the sort that is pervasive in everyday life in the real world, so that's no objection. Looks like my analogy keeps coming back in style \ The rules they seek to impose on other players are not only not in effect in the wildy, they're not in effect anywhere in RS! :-w That's why we're talking about emergent gameplay, because people are creating their own social rules. I think it's both emergent game play and silly. And you should too. :P If someone comes to your door and attempts to convince you that technology is evil and you should destroy your computer, you would think that's silly right? But there are people that actually do believe that, and there have been such people for many hundreds of years. Check out the Luddites on wikipedia for an example of such a social movement in history. I guarantee you, it's not silly to THEM. Well, it's probably silly to some of them. Anyways, the Luddites trashed factories and such which is probably a negative for those who disagree with them, ppl who call you a noob as you kill them in the wilderness seem to me to be a positive even if you disagree with them. Do you see my point? That's what is so great about rpg's, even the super annoying trolls kinda add something to the game world. ignore lists, world hopping, teleporting, respawning in lumby, this game is full of ways to deal with unpleasant characters that real life sorely lacks. I would have responded to more of his points, but I agreed with the majority of what he wrote. This article was my response to his conclusion, which I disagreed with. I believe that disagreeing with every single thing someone says just because there is a dispute over one issue is something that loses its appeal as one grows older.

In my book, what you wrote there counts as flaming. If you think I've taken something out of context, address it specifically. Accusing me of not fully understanding those articles without providing specific references is very insulting. I don't understand why you think I'm attacking articles which actually agree with this point, and since you don't provide specifics I don't see how I could understand. I'll provide a definition of emergence which will hopefully provide some insight as to how far emergent game play can be taken, condensed in wikipedia from an article by Goldstein (1999) in the inaugural issue of Emergence: Emergence refers to the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems. The common characteristics are: (1) radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems); (2) coherence or correlation (meaning integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time); (3) A global or macro "level" (i.e. there is some property of "wholeness"); (4) it is the product of a dynamical process (it evolves); and (5) it is "ostensive" - it can be perceived. (6) it is supervenient (downward causation between levels) By this definition, any persistent organization of people in an MMORPG to accomplish some ingame (or even purely social) goal is clearly emergent. Emergent game play does NOT exist for a purpose. If a feature was constructed for a purpose, then it would not satisfy condition 4 above, as instead of a product of a dynamical process it would be a designed game feature. I don't really understand what you are talking about by impeding... it seems to me that a common confusion people have about the code of honor is the way in which behavioral memes propagate. The preferred method is not intimidation, but shame. When a group of 4 pkers mocks someone for praying, there is obviously no intimidation intended, only shame. Also, the main effect of the conversation is just to maintain morale and group unity of the pking group, to attempt to interpret "trash talk" as an attempt at serious communication is really quite naive.

There are such things in the real world as Codes of Honor, and only some of them become laws. In fact, those that are and those that aren't very often conflict. The codes of honor regarding duelling with pistols persisted long after duelling itself was made illegal in many countries. You should wiki duelling and check it out, it's quite fascinating :) (Just one example of how my article was 3 times shorter than it could have been :P ) I wasn't trying to persuade you to follow any codes of honor in RS actually, I was just trying to persuade you that it's a good thing that they exist, among other things.

Exactly. Here's the thing about the analogy between Earth and RS. It's the funniest analogy I could think of, and it also uses the two things I knew everyone in my audience would be familiar with. If anyone thinks it's a bad analogy, feel free to elaborate on your better analogy for everyone's benefit, especially if you can do it humorously :) That's what's awesome about emergent behavior, it occurs on many levels and you can make meaningful comparisons between levels. I suppose that is why the analogy between Earth and RS seems so strange to many people, they are on completely different levels of behavior. The reason the analogy is both funny and useful is that as an MMORPG, RS has a huge amount of inherent similarity to Earth, and RS societies have inherent similarity to RL societies.

That's a HORRIBLE analogy, at least until you tell us where to get a +9 all defense +4 prayer cape for 99k elsewhere... the quest cape doesn't have the pray bonus but it's still cheaper than the obby cape, so in my opinion that makes the obby cape the vanity cape between those two. I just love when people quote half of what I say.... After that point, I did say that if you are actually wearing the cape for it's bonuses, then yes, it is annoying, and to just say you're busy and ignore the person if requests continue (or something like that). But I don't think someone standing in a bank trading or something really needs that extra 9 defense and 4 prayer. If I am out fighting something, and need those bonuses, then you'd better bet I'm not gunna turn my back on an enemy to do my emote for you. Happy? I quoted your whole post this time-- A good thing for everyone too dim to SCROLL UP to read the original in full... anyways, your lame attempt to pretend that "for it's[sic] bonuses" is equivalent to "However, I can see it being a bit annoying if you are actually using that level 100 stat, like in cooking on something. Just tell them you are busy at the moment, and then ignore them. " isn't going to fly. You specifically limited it to the 100 stat bonus and then gave an example of the same. Having to take off my cape to avoid being asked for emotes is as annoying a prospect as the requests themselves. Just give it up.

That's a HORRIBLE analogy, at least until you tell us where to get a +9 all defense +4 prayer cape for 99k elsewhere... the quest cape doesn't have the pray bonus but it's still cheaper than the obby cape, so in my opinion that makes the obby cape the vanity cape between those two.

What you are not understanding in our viewpoints, I think, is that we perceive an enormous gap between "taking them into consideration" and "writing unbiased articles". I personally see unbiased as a relative term, that no one can ever write something absolutely unbiased. While I agree that mature flame-free discussions are a worthy goal, I think that it's better to focus on quality thinking and quality communication as a means to that end, instead of pretending to be without bias.

Because conflict is interesting, and people play games to be entertained. If you want boring sameness, you don't need to boot up RS to get that. True enough, but I'd rather see RS as a better game than min/max every decision for number of paying customers. I believe that attitude backfires anyways. Uh if you think people quit RS because they don't find an ingame wife... then I don't know what to say. I agree in large part, although I don't agree that it's necessarily immature or egocentric to create a wilderness code of honor.

Hence we have Smite. This is in the General forum for F2P. All discussion threads for the Times go in this forum, including the one about hunting. BTW, the smite comment was drawn directly from the actual editorial, I suggest you reread it before making more snarky comments.

I don't know what world you're living in, but in the one I play in, whips were 2.5 million when I started playing less than a year ago, and have steadily dropped to 1.6million. From what I hear, they'd been steadily dropping from 10 million to 2.5million in the year prior. Don't know how you translate that into "fluctuations", to me that says pretty clearly that 10k people with 85 slayer = a lot of whips per day into the economy, and the number of whips lost per day must be like...5 or 10. I'd expect whips to stabilize around 500k in a few years.

appeal to authority, a classical fallacy Your total lack of proof or justification or logical argument underscores how wrong you are. Considering how you eschew the use of references, or logical argumentation, I'm going to say that we are in fact NOT getting really technical. That would be foolish of me, since I actually do agree with the 95% of the article that's the supporting information and personal preference, and merely disagree with the thesis statement... I don't however agree with you, in your nutty theory that a self contradiction in the thesis statement is a technicality.

They do both mean the same thing, because the first is understood to mean the second in everyday conversation, so that's a very misleading example. So, they obviously are both not opinions, as they have the exact same meaning. "Losing honor when you pray isn't." Yes, that's an opinion, but it's not an opinion expressly held by the author of the article, so if you were trying to give an example of that, you haven't succeeded. If you weren't trying to do that, then I don't really know what you were trying to do and it's not relevant to my post, so nvm. :)

That's a huge oversimplication isn't it Kiara? 80% of the article is obvious fact, that no one disputes. 15% of the article is personal preference, which isn't opinion. If I say I like chocolate ice cream, that's not an opinion, that's a fact about my preferences. Unless I'm lying :P . 5% of the article is an attempt to have an opinion, that fails. Unfortunately that 5% was the whole point of the article. From dictionary.com: An opinion is a belief or judgment that falls short of absolute conviction, certainty, or positive knowledge; it is a conclusion that certain facts, ideas, etc., are probably true or likely to prove so. If someone has an 'opinion' that 2 + 2 = 5, it's not really an opinion, it's a false belief. A necessary component for a belief to be an opinion is insufficient evidence to establish the truth of the matter with 100% certainty. In matters that are not mathematical, there usually isn't 100% certainty about anything, however if the statement contradicts itself one can be 100% sure the statement is false. In modern society, as moral relativism spreads across the land, the only way for many to refute someone else's moral judgement with certainty is to level charges of self-contradiction or hypocrisy. This has done very little except render these kind of charges very boring and ineffective, as people just drop their relativist standards lower instead of modifying their behavior. Still, when someone makes a self-contradictory argument, like that found in this week's Times, there's really no other sensible rebuttal, as boring as it might be. While I don't share starev's sentiments about bias in the original article, this does seem like a good topic for another article with a different viewpoint. But it's not like one can just take the opposite viewpoint-- the original article is basically "1 a certain subset of the pking world has made their own rules, 2 i don't like it, 3 and they should stop making their own rules because there are no rules in the wildy" The first part is so well known that it's redundant, the second part is irrelevant, and the third part is incoherent. What's the opposite viewpoint to that? The article I would want to see on the subject of pking is an article that examines possible changes to the current system in the wildy and the effects they would have. Anything else is too likely to be either ranting or redundant, unless someone has a really brilliant idea. Sadly, good articles like that are harder than they look, and they look plenty hard from here. Maybe an article on the history of the wildy could work also. I see so many people blame the difference in demographics for the wildy being less honorable and fun than before. But there are so many other factors, more expensive gear being added to the game, better training spots outside the wildy being added, a different distribution of levels in an older game, the rise of pking teams over solo pkers (which I see as a direct result of the first 3 things). People have such a tendency to blame predictable economic patterns on some imaginary moral degradation over time. When you consider all the changes Jagex has made outside the wildy, it seems obvious that it's due for an incredibly massive overhaul to keep up. For me, the wildy is an obsolete area where I go to do agility and clues, and I think that's due to a conscious choice by Jagex to supplant the wildy with minigames.

No, I wasn't talking about those pronouns at all. I was referring to: 1. you have "doesn't want to make the more informed of us", where you obviously should have "doesn't make the more informed of us want to". This has the effect of switching the thing that is wanting from 'us' to 'a way', which is insane as it personifies a behavior. 2. you have "ourselves at his representation" when you probably mean "ourselves, over his representation". This wouldn't be so bad, but due to the fact that the people who you are ascribing shame to aren't the ones responsible for the actions causing the shame, the preposition becomes very unclear and syntactical aid is needed.

I'm pretty sure you mean the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of this quote starev, i suggest you edit it yesterday. Well, breaking it down: Make sure the author can represent himself-Teach him In a way that doesn't make-not to make the more informed of us--make the smart people nearly defecate ourselves in shame--wet ourselves at the shame at his representation of humanity to us--of his stupidity. Teach him not to make the smart people wet ourselves at the shame of his stupidity. Other then a vague pronoun (which I will fix), it gets across the idea quite well. I see that you are trying to say "teach him not make the smart people wet ourselves at the shame of his stupidity", but what you actually said translates to "his actions would rip themselves off his body and force smart people to defecate all over this friday's tip it times, in a shameful fashion" which is both disgusting and insane, and probably not what you meant.

I agree with 95% of the article. The other 5% of the article contradicts itself. Sadly, that 5% is the central thesis of the article, which kinda negates the point of the whole thing. I believe I am doing my best to clearly state my positions, the more self-contradictory and unclear lbo is in his replies to me, the more tangled my replies become in an attempt to address his points.

I'm pretty sure you mean the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of this quote starev, i suggest you edit it yesterday.

If I used words incorrectly, please point them out. If you cannot, I'll assume your baseless accusations are born out of jealousy. "...I don't say pkers need to change what they do: they merely need to accept that anyone can do whatever they like in the wilderness. It's not a "rule", it's a fact of life." lol you're struggling pretty hard to avoid the dilemma. In the very same sentence you claim that pkers don't need to change what they do, and specify exactly what it is that they need to change in what they do-- namely "accept that anyone can do whatever they like in the wilderness". You seem to be unaware that "to accept" is a verb. Again, you contradict yourself, but I'll argue against your latter position since it seems to be the one you really mean. My first issue with your argument is that you haven't established that pkers don't accept that anyone can do whatever they like in the wilderness. If we take a close look at the matter, it's apparent that the ability to break the rules of honor that certain pkers have established is not only accepted by the pkers, but is necessary to this issue even existing-- since your entire article was about you disapproving of the ways in which pkers responded to those who broke the unwritten rules. This issue is a very complicated one, the way in which you carelessly intermix "can" and "should" and "do" renders any meaningful conclusion impossible. My second issue with your argument is, as I've already stated, its hypocritical nature. You said " they merely need to accept that anyone can do whatever they like in the wilderness." Well, you need to accept that too. The pkers can do whatever they like in the wilderness just as well as you can, if what they like includes making up rules of honor that you dislike, then just stay away from them. Trying to convince them to stop doing something, based on the premise that they can do whatever they like, is completely insane. I'm not trying to be insulting, just honest.

lol, time honored comeback when someone's lost the argument, "go reread what I already wrote" Sorry, I got it the first time, and it's wrong. "explained that completely", what does that have to do with it? Your problem isn't incomplete explanation, it's just plain ol' being wrong. I'll put this very simply, because I'm not sure you've understood it. At one point, you said pkers need to change, because the wilderness has no rules. This is clearly hypocritical and self-contradictory. At another point, you said you merely dislike what pkers do on world 18. If so, your article is worded too strongly, which is just as well as absent that argument for the pkers to change it would be a pointless rant--since if its merely dislike of an easy to avoid microcosm...just avoid it--and mere dislike has no chance of persuading anyone to change their behavior. In one respect it doesn't matter which of those you pick as your real position, because they are both bad positions, but they contradict each other and it is very hard to argue against you if you constantly switch back and forth between two contradictory positions. I hope you can see by now that your reply that you'd already explained it completely is totally irrelevant, you can explain it 25 times if you like, but wrong is still wrong.

so you are saying there is/should be a rule against getting incensed or acting surprised? When you issue forth proclamations like "The PK world needs to realise that the wilderness isn't the Duel Arena with dragons. There are no rules.", you are indeed telling others how to play and what to do. Furthermore, if you take away that demand on pkers to change from your article, than your article is left as nothing more than "I don't like what pkers on world 18 say and do", which is just a somewhat pointless rant, albeit one i would personally agree with. However, the solution is just to ... not go into wildy on world 18 near edgeville, hardly an onerous proposition. So which horn of the dilemma do you choose? Are you hypocritically demanding pkers to change, or are you making a pointless rant that merely expresses a dislike?