Masarius

I am really not understanding the mind set of these posts that qualify a suicide threat with 'he was joking'. An email can not portray emotion or the fact that your being sarcastic, there is no little smile. raised eyebrow, giggle or anything like that at the end of the sentence suggesting you're joking - you can only take the words at face value. The person receiving the email does not necessarily know you are joking. Take this possible email for example: "Dear Jagex, I am writing to complain about the recent banning of my account. I have spent many hours and hundreds of dollars tailoring my account and you take it away from me for no reason at all! This has made me very upset and If you do not cancel the ban on my account I might go and kill myself! -Hypotheticus" Is the sarcasm in that hypothetical email obvious? Is it even there at all? Is the threat very serious? Who knows. Going back to my EverQuest example I used earlier I've done a little more research. The name of the man who killed himself was 21 year old Shawn Woolley. Essentially Shawn was a person who suffered from epilepsy and depression (amongst other things) but it is felt by some that an addiction to EverQuest is what pushed him over the edge. In fact he was playing EverQuest when he killed himself and the game was still running when he was found! A couple of articles relating to the death are here and here. Given that Shawns death can potentially be linked to playing an MMORPG, and Runescape is also a somewhat addictive MMORPG, Jagex have very logical grounds to take suicide threats seriously. Who knows if Hypertheticus in the above email is just some kid making a joke or another Shawn Woolley - a severely depressed individual that has just been pushed to the edge by being banned from a game he is addicted to? To the people complaining that Jagex is wasting the Polices time, I think youre blaming the wrong people here. MMOs have a history of being destructive of peoples lives and so Jagex has both solid grounds and a responsibility to take these threats seriously. Its the polices job to protect people from harm even personal harm. The people who are wasting everyones time are those that are making the false claims of being suicidal.

I support Jagex's position on this. Perhaps most people are too young but does anyone else remember in the very late 90's early 2000's when EverQuest was being referred to as "EverCrack" on the internet and some magazines? Essentially people were getting so attached to EverQuest that they were showing all the signs of full addiction. There were people starving to death as they were so driven to play EverQuest that they would forget to sleep or eat. This is perhaps why so many games of the era have warnings about taking a break from the game, I remember the warning that would pop up during the loading screens of Baldur's Gate 2 "While your character doesn't need to eat YOU DO, remember to take breaks often" (or something like that). And yes, there were also accounts of people committing suicide over in game events. The EverQuest addiction got to the point that several support groups were set up to help people cope with the effects of video game addiction. The one I remember was "EverQuest Widows" which was essentially a support network of women who had divorced there husbands because they had been spending all their time playing EverQuest and were being lousy husbands and fathers. The point is people do get very attached to there in game persona's, especially in MMO's. Given the history of addiction in these sorts of games, and the fact that people have actually died over in game events in the past, it would be irresponsible of Jagex not to take this kind of talk seriously. With regards to the people saying that Jagex shouldn't interfere with peoples personal lives I feel that any person, whether they be a mod on a video game or a family member, have a responsibility to protect another person from harm if they have the ability to do so. I think that if the police showed up and stopped my son or daughter from hanging themselves over something so silly as not reaching a particular agility level (or whatever) I would be praising Jagex as a responsible company, not complaining that they tried to interfere with my private life via the police!

Personally I like MA as a Runescape update, the strategy element is an interesting introduction to Runescape that I think will make for some interesting quests in future. I think the major problem is that people went in expecting something to rival the best of the RTS world - I remember during it's first week of release listening (more like reading in Runescape : ) to people complaining that it wasn't as good as age of empires 3 , which I feel is a completely unfair comparison. A java based MMORPG which has just experimented with the RTS concept for the first time simply can not compare to games like age3 which are produced by companies that specialise in RTS. Some people need to accept MA for what it is (<- a comment not aimed at anyone in particular just the general feeling I got in the first week of MA). That said I also completely agree with what others have said criticising MA. To be honest many of the games modes are obvious tech demo's designed more to see what can be done with the Runescape engine rather than focusing on entertainment value/game play. In many cases the games are just not fun. Take conflict for example; there is really no incentive to actually play the game. Most people don't even engage in combat past the 10 orders (or whatever) you need to issue to get your rank, and just sit there waiting out the game. And I don't blame them, for all the extra effort you have to put in to win you only get one extra rank. On top of that you get no guarantee that you'll actually win if you do play the game properly so after all that extra effort you will probably still end up with the same reward as someone who just sat there. The same could be said to varying degrees with the other game modes. I do like hoard however, I find it forces people to actually play the game and it's fun to battle over the cave entrances. In my opinion the rewards, for what they are, are completely unbalanced compared to the amount of time and effort required to get the highest level kit. I have absolutely no interest in getting a uniform that has no stat bonuses considering all the effort that is required to get them. The quest kit is interesting, but Ive been able to do the quests without it up till now, and to be honest I dont think its worth grinding away at MA to get the highest level quest kit. Same with the locators, a cool idea but it doesnt really take that long to get to my favourite resource spots without it irony is that in the time it would take to get the highest level locator I could make a fair bit of cash through using the old fashion walking/teleport methods to get to the resources. After all those hundreds of games and tens of hours playing the arguably best reward is a simple ring that grants +6 to all stats... A bit over rated considering the amount of effort and frustration needed to get it. Especially as it now seems that people are having to essentially cheat to get it.

Sorry ArtemisCatal but that's not entirely true. Site Advisor is a firefox (and internet explorer I think?) plugin and is free to download from the McAfree website, it requires no subscription for updates and is a completely free service. Also as it is a browser plugin it should require next to no extra system resources to run. I cannot comment on it slowing down dialup connections as I haven't used dialup in years, but I suspect it would have a minimal impact. Yes Norton does cost, which is why I also included the free alternative in my original post. In past years Norton has been a real dog to run on less than optimal system environments, but with the realease of 360 last year they have made a real effort to reduce the system footprint of the software. I'm using norton on my laptop right now with no noticable problems - and this computer can only run runescape with SD graphics! In any case the point of the post was not to say that these programs should be a replacement for the system jagex plans to beef up security for runescape, no virus protection will offer that sort of security for the game! The point was to build on a previous post that said you should be careful what websites you open as they can contain viruses. When someone replied that they don't check that the sites they are going to are safe I wanted to point out that there is software that will do this for you from some very reliable developers so you don't have to do it yourself. My post wasn't necessarily about runescape security but just to point out some software that can provide you a first line of defence for your computer in general while browsing the net. Edit: Expanding on what I said about the system resources necessary to run this software I should also point out that neither application is actually scanning the web pages. McAfee and Norton are doing this themselves. Software like site advisor work by comparing the url to a database of url's on a McAfee or Nortons server that the companies themselves have taken the time to scan. As such they shouldn't slow your computer down like a virus scanner can during a full system scan.

You could always use Norton Internet Security or McAfree Site Advisor (or both, as I do) to do the background search for you.... Norton and Mcafree are both actively scanning web pages for virus's as a preventative measure to try to stop computers from being infected in the first place. Whenever you do a google search Norton Internet Security and McAfree Site Advisor both insert icons next to the hyperlinks to tell you the security of the website; green tick for virus free, yellow for potential threats and red for sites where threats have been detected. In each case you can hover your mouse over the icon to get a break down of what the potential threats are including viruses in the page code, virus infected downloads available on site, or links to sites with known threats. Furthermore Norton Internet security will often block virus containing web pages that you accidently click on or if you typed in the URL. Just some software you might like to look into for a basic level of security...

Oh how the times have changed :P Starting primary school in the 80's and high school in the mid-late 90's I grew up in a completely different era. Back in the early 90's just about any sort of computer gaming would instantly label you a nerd and you'd be teased out right. Keep in mind that this was the era where computer gaming came hand in hand with knowing DOS commands, how to mess around with programs like setver and memmaker, knowing how to modify the autoexec.bat and config.sys file and knowing what memory is let alone the difference between conventional memory, UMA, EMS and XMS. Consol gaming was slightly better without the stigmatism of being a computer nerd but you certainly didn't have in-depth conversations about it. To be honest gaming in general really didn't become 'cool' (or at least socially acceptable) until the PS2's success made it main stream. It's funny to see how far things have come with PC gaming. When I was at school you would never have openly said you were playing such a time consuming PC game as runescape, in fact if runescape existed in those days you would probably have also been bullied for playing a dungeons and dragons type game rather than doom. You would certainly not have had people openly arguing over which MMO game was better at school, both parties would have been laughed at and ostracised. Now days it's completely different: where in the early 90's people would have bullied you just for admitting you liked spending time with computers, today the Sims, a game where you literally live a life on your computer, is the number one selling game. How ironic... Anyway back on topic: Now I'm at university doing a Master's degree and no one cares what you play, how much you play or when you play it. Life gets a heck of a lot easier after high school :roll:

I'd agree with that. If I'm not mistaken I think I remember the dragon platebodies being first listed on the GE at 30m by Jagex. To be honest a price that high just isn't justified for a piece of armour which is, by todays standards, completely out classed and belongs in 2005. Not to mention that the D platebody isn't even that nice to look at, as others have pointed out. Truth is the dragon platebody was put on the market by Jagex at a price that was way to high, and everyone who was willing to pay that high price (either for gloating or just because they really desired it) have done so. Now the platebody is naturally re-adjusting itself on the market to find a reasonable price point that everyone else is willing to pay.

I've got no problem with people praying - as far as I'm concerned it's part of the game. But I don't usually PK because of the general cowardice of PK'ers. I've been on the PvP worlds for the last few hours just checking it out, but honestly I haven't had a single fight yet where the other person hasn't run away or teleported. Again I feel these are part of the game and you are free to use them, but if you are going to have the gumption to run up to me and smack me with your sword then you should also be ready to back up your actions with a good fight! The last fight I was in I was attacked by a warrior who ran up to me as I was walking from lumby. I started winning, he ran. At the same time there was an archer on the northern bridge who started firing at me the second the warrior ran - probably expecting to get an easy kill as the warrior had done a fair bit of damage- I ran up to him, started winning, and he ran. Seriously, it's bad enough that you would lurk around trying to pick off easy targets from a distance (similar to stabbing a man in the back), but at least have the decency not to run if it turns out you took on more than you can handle.

At the end of the day I'm not sure Jagex will be able to make much difference to the decline of the price of rare drops as it's following general economic theory: supply and demand. The D full has better stats and is a rare drop. People desire to have it, there aren't many of them around so the price remains high. The D med has lesser stats. While it still maybe a rare drop the desire to obtain the item has declined in favour of the D full, as such people are willing to pay less for it. The other side of this of course is that as more people are buying the more desirable D full less D meds will sell, thus raising the amount of D meds on the market (increasing their supply), forcing people to compete by offering lower prices. As such while Jagex maybe able to implement new systems, or adjust old systems, to provide items with a base sale price items will always drop substantially from their original sale price. If people simply aren't willing to pay a high price for an item then it just isn't going to sell for that price. As people have pointed out, items that were expensive when the game started are now very cheap due to years of new, better, and more desirable items being fed into the runescape economy over the years. This is how economics works, would you buy an old 486 processor for the same price of a modern core 2 quad? Sure when the 486 was cutting edge it was worth a lot but today it's "low stats" make it completely useless in the modern world and therefore not in demand. Likewise would you demand the same price for a addy 2h as a rune 2h simply because the addy 2h was there first even though it's stats are out gunned? The Runescape economy, like the real world economy, is constantly changing and evolving. Things wonÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t stay the same forever, new ways of making money will always appear and the old ways will always be affected. The best you can do is go with the flow and adapt your money producing methods to fit the changing economy.

To be honest it's the 'rules of honour' that have completely put me off pkÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ing in Runescape. IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve been in the wild 3 times and for all three was unaware of the rules. The first time I was approached by another play wanting to fight while in Varrok. I was told I was allowed no food, no prayer etc... and once started it would be a fight to the death. I agreed but just as we got to lvl 1 wild (we were the same combat lvl) he calls out 'brb didn't bring any str pots'. So basically I had all the restrictions that he could impose on me but he failed to mention that he was gonna be using str pots to get an advantage, and once he learnt that he didn't have the advantage over me that he thought he did he retreated back to varrok - going against the rules he himself had set for the fight. The second and third times I went to the wild really put me off because it boiled down petty name calling. My second time in the wild was a 'fight to the death', my opponent was a good 4-5 lvl's above me. I start eating lobbies when fighting only to get bombarded with 'noob safer', 'noob', 'cheating noob'. My third time in the wild I attacked a mage (I was in full addy with rune scimmy) that was talking to some of his mates in lvl 1 wild. Once again all I got in return was 'omg not cool' and 'noob'. Prior to this I had myself been distance attacked by a mage. While I agree that there are some advantages to having and honour system in game (based on my reading of this thread) My experience has only led me to two conclusions. Firstly it seems that the honour system is often used to give the rule maker an advantage even to the point that they will break there own rules if they find that that advantage has been lost. How does this use of the rules of honour make the fights more interesting/balanced? Secondly the pk'ing community is very aggressive to new pk'ers. Keeping in mind that the three experiences above were all prior to my learning of the honour system, absolutely no one was willing to let me know what I had done wrong or why some people were allowed to distance attack me while I got absulutely slammed for doing something similar. Further no one was willing to explain why it wasn't ok for me to attack someone who is talking to his mates while in the wild, surely if you wanted to talk you could find a better place to do it.

Hi guys I've been training with a rune scimmy to try and get my strength up to at least level 50 (it's level 43 currently) but I'm not hitting hitting higher than a 9 on the scorpions in al karid and usually only hitting 6-7, people have told me that with a rune scimmy I should be hitting higher than this but as I've never seen a higher hit I thought I'd come and ask. My total combat level is 53, I've got level 50 attack, level 43 strength, 32 defence (next to be level up). When using my scimmy I have the combat stance set to slash, I wear an ammy of accuracy and full steel + kite, and on the equipment stats it says I have +49 slash (although I don't actually understand what that means). Am I hitting the correct damage for my level with a rune scimmy or is something here holding my attack down?