ashftw

no offense intended, but I have to pretty much disagree with this article. There is little to no evidence to suggest that Jagex as a company see's emergent game play as players breaking the game. The 3rd client issue was obviously something that came about due to obvious security risks caused by players creating programs that hijacked users accounts or stole personal details. From my experience some but not all Rs players are pretty stupid and gullible and will download anything and enter any kind of information that is asked for without think "hum do you think this might be a scam". Jagex simply tried to protect its players by removing a threat from the game and clearing up what was a very large grey area. I do admit that they went about this completely the wrong way, but soon realized their mistake and quickly made appropriate changes. Back on topic I see that Jagex embraces emergent game play just as much as any other company would. Only having problems when being creative and imaginative goes that bit to far and over steps the boundaries into bug abuse or down right scamming. The wow example is all well and good for wow but think of this from a RS point of view putting yourself in the shoes of the poor character on the receiving end of this "Clever manipulation of game mechanics" I don't think you would find it all funny and say to yourself "that was a great use of game mechanics to lure me out here and kill me to get all my items" Im sure that if Jagex really had a big problem with players using their imagination when playing the game they would make a serious overhaul to the games mechanics. While we did see this done as you rightly put at the end of RSC they have not really made any significants changes to combat system since showing that they do not have a big problem with the way users are player the game. Personally I think there is more evidence to suggest that Runescape does encourage this type of play. For instance just look at the requirements on some of the newer items. The Crozier for instance has no atk str or def level requirement only prayer. it offers +25 crush as well as +32 str mix this with other items like a Berserker ring giving a further + 4 crush + str and an amulet of fury another +10 crush + 8 str and a high prayer lvl and you get player who can keep combat lvl down to a bare minimum and still do large sums of damage relative to its level. Now this might not be a good example but its just one of the endless combinations of items you can put together in the game. So I would say while RuneScape is not the most imaginative game in the world the opportunity's to be original are still there and I think that its the players who are lacking the imagination not the game.