Slick_cat

I Had time to rethink my suggestion for bringing back PKing modified by total Quest Points plus I forgot to include a request for a Rune Essence Mine as part of Managing your Kingdom MiniGame.

Very High level Prayer (80 prayer to use + quest) that makes you immune to freezing/binding spells. Very high level potions that (90 herblore to make) make you immune to freezing/binding spells. Rare ring of free movement - more difficult to get than seer/warrior/berserker ring. Any and all of these would hose mage hybrids appropriately.

(Sung to the tune of Great Big Sea's "End of the World") RS forums have seemingly crashed - that or Jagex shut them off in response to the deluge of angry complaints. Game servers are acting extremely flakey as well. DDOS by angry pker clans, bot-pimps or both? You decide. ----------------------- On the whole I actually like the update - it sort of achieves what I was advocating at various points in 2006, but does it in a hamfisted fashion. Restricting the ability to trade shuts the bots down, but I think that Jagex has throttled it completely. 1M RS gold on the blackmarket is about $3.30 CDN/US 1.) setting the stake and also the trading imbalance cap at 100k = $0.33 CDN/US per 15 minutes or $1.32 per hour. While this might be worth it for Asian sweatshoppers, it certainly isn't to dishonest players in the First World. 2.) I've suggested in my lone thread supporting Jagex, that they loosen the Grand Exchange price limitations to +/- 7.5% and have each click be worth +/- 2.5% instead of +/- 5%. 3.) also, you should be able to reprice your items without taking down the listing and thus losing your spot in the sellers line 4.) I've suggested that they allow each person to register 2-3 accounts as a group - main and up to 2 pure/pker/skiller accounts - that they can trade freely in between said accounts. Make it cost 1M cash to register-link two accounts together and 5.) I've suggested that they allow high level characters the ability to give away stuff - lock it behind 200 QPs (and possibly make the Complete Recipe for Disaster and Mourning's End Part II be requisites for that) - bots/sweatshoppers do some quests but they only do the bare minimum. at 200 QPs: a high level can give away up to 1M of stuff per day each QP there after adds 100k to that total Jagex wants us to quest, this will encourage us to quest, Bots can't quest so botpimps have to hire sweatshoppers to quest on their bot accounts. at 300 QP = 2M = only $6.66 per day = not a lot and those accounts will be rare and hurt to lose. 6.) bring back PKing all over the wild with the following changes: EDITTED: victim: 1 QP = 0.25% of hiding dropped item , would require 400 QPs to hide all items dropped upon death of victim killer: 1 QP = 0.5% of uncovering a dropped item, would require 200 QPs to have all items dropped upon death cash is never seen or dropped no noted items If the killer does get something, they have to loot it from the Gravestone: using combination of Mining, Crafting and Thievery Examples: A Victim: 0 QPs Killer: 0 QPs Victim drops everything, but killer gets nothing B Victim: 249 QPs Killer: 0 QPs Victims hides everything dropped, so killer gets nothing C Victim: 0 QPs Killer: 249 QPs Victim drops everything, killer can theoretically get everything by looting the Grave D Victim: 249 QPs Killer: 249 QPs Victim: 249 x 0.25 = 62.25% of stuff hidden (excess from killer subtracts from this) Killer: 249 x 0.5 = 124.5% of stuff uncovered 62.25-24.5 = 37.75% So, victim hides 37.75% of dropped items, killer can theoretically get everything else by looting the Grave So 7.) NEW: Add a rune essence mine to Kingdoms of Miscellania, Etcetria and Underfood - Quest Lock it to a quest behind Royal Trouble===================== In the end, I think the backlash will force Jagex to tone down their modifications, I just hope that they adopt something like the above.

Yes, part of the whole point of the Grand Exchange is to increase market fluidity. Before the GE, what you were paying for was the item + the merchant's commission for having the item. In introducing the GE, fluidity (availability of many items) has gone up - thus generally lowering prices on most objects. This squeezes: merchants and by extension bot-pimps who hide amongst the merchants. Bot-pimps being those nasty people that run chains of bots. Better still, lower level players (that Jagex is trying to attract and retain as customers) are able to afford more stuff. This of course means that the rest of us have to work to earn our coin, instead of merchanting.[/b]

They've blocked the trade thru a store method. I assume gravestones will also block arranging to die to a monster trades. All that's left is: acct to acct trades and drop trades. I'm not convinced about their ability to detect 'imbalanced trades'; they've fibbed about things many a time before. Also, lots of people give presents to friends or lend things to friends. And even if acct-to-acct trade detection works, drop trades in secluded spots are a huge loophole. I wish that they'd quest-lock acct-to-acct trade behind a 1-2 hr long highly variable quest and either get rid of drop trades or hide them behind acct-to-acct as well.

Wow, I'm impressed that they admitted that. I'm really hoping that they managed to nip the problem in the bud, they don't seem to be going about it the right way. I'm praying that their moves to make the Grand Exchange, tighten up Player Parties and staking are all preludes to Quest-Locking normal player to player trade

Until you know exactly what their search protocols, tools and methods are, how about you stop preaching such assumptions? Foolish nub. I don't need to know their exact 'search protocols, tools and methods' are. All I need are eyes that see and a brain that works. Specifically: analyzing behaviour and comparing primitive bots like fisher or woodcutter bots to that of suspected bots, and then comparing both to that of known humans... not hard is it? a decent memory and noticing patterns like 'hey those 3 guys are all acting weird and they are all similar combat levels and hmmm similar stat-builds....' 'oh wow, those Asian sweatshoppers seem to really like this style of hair on their female characters' 'oh look, he's leaving tons of valuable herbs lying on the ground, that's not logical' 'oh look, I've gotten the jump on attacking the blue dragon for a 5th time in a row and he's still standing there when a human would complain, swear at me, move to another spot or hop worlds....' being able to type and ask questions like 'hey are you a bot' 'okay, then what am i wearing?' and being able to reason that '?', 'hi', 'this my spot', 'kk' and my personal favourite 'sorry I am busy' are fishy particularily if their context does not match what you asked also remembering that some people are muted and can't type but they can answer with emotes (Yes and No emotes are quite useful) studying philosophy, anthropology and psychology at university (as I currently do) helps but isn't necessary.

Reasonable idea, my version from 1-1.5 years ago had people be able to challenge someone once an hour (or be challenged once an hour). If you failed enough challenges, anyone could attack you anywhere. Also: news flash to everyone that believes that bots are a dying breed - it currently takes Jagex 3+ weeks to ban a bot (from the time that you report it).

They already are undetectable because the bot-pimps employ humans (sweatshoppers) to handle randoms and quests. Jagex's fault for letting it go so long (see my 'the Great RuneScape Bot-Hunt') for discussion on how bot and sweatshopper has merged, and also what Jagex could have done to stop the bots 1.5 years ago when I told them.

in most countries, subscription works out to about $7-8 CDN or US. those 15 bots (well 13 were working, 12 still are now) made $450 CDN/US in 2 weeks $450/8 = 56 accounts paid for I suspect that the 'paid for' bit is why Jagex is so bad about taking them out. I also suspect that Jagex includes the bots in its 'available audience' when they sell advertising to companies. Seriously: hop to f2p Draynor (I usually trade f2p friends there), on most days the bots outnumber actual kids 6:4. Time Jagex on how long it takes them to ban the account - if you can still see it on hiscores, its not completely banned. It has taken me 2.25 years to get 91 crafting, 82 runecrafting etc... Nothing pisses me of more than see an autobowstringer or an autorc'er (I've seen them at cosmic, chaos, law and nature altars) with scores higher than mine. :evil: :shame:

Actually, there is a way to 'keep up with their account making', it's just that Jagex is too stubborn/stupid/Jagex to do it. I've got two out of three blackmarks on the forums (0 black marks in the game itself). Both were for screaming at Jagex for hiding/deleting detailed suggestion that would work. All the honest, intelligent adults that read it agreed that it would work. Dishonest ones figured that it would make transferring stuff between their accounts difficult and stupid ones... well never mind about stupid ones.... -.- It was raising the cost of making a bot account. Right now it takes a human about 3 minutes to make a new account. (a friend of mine timed it) Following mass purges of bots, friends of mine that know what to look for reported going to f2p worlds and watching a bot per second arrive in Lumbridge from Tutorial Island. The problem is that a bot fresh off of Tutorial Island is already useful as a mule account in that it can trade other accounts as soon as it arrives. Anyway, the idea in its various incarnations was to restrict player to player trade. The final, simplest version was to have an extremely variable quest that took 1-2 hours to complete. The ability to trade or drop-trade would be locked behind this quest. Why would this work? lets look at an 8 hour shift, shall we? 8 x 60 = 480 minutes divide by 3 = 160 bots made by a human in that 8 hr shift More to the point, Tutorial Island is easy enough that I suspect that they have macro programs that walk the bot through it. Now, in the scenario in which Jagex finally smartens the !@#^)+ up and locks the ability to trade behind a 1-2 hours long quest... 4-8 bots made and they have to use their human sweatshop employees to do the quest If I report a bot (and it currently takes Jagex 3+ weeks to ban a bot) out of 160, the bot-pimps don't really care. For them its a non-event. If I report a bot out of 4-8, then it finally hurts. ------ It would be interesting to see what they're working on to counter bots... Who knows. maybe they'll even smarten up and quest-lock trade? :D I shan't get my hopes up, after all, we're talking about Jagex... :wall:

I thought that was considered Multi-logging. Correct me if I am wrong. :) Last time I checked the rules (about a year ago), it was allowed provided that gear didn't move between accounts. 1.) You can be sure that bot-pimps move things between accounts. I once met a group of 8 lvl 126s accounts that worked the green dragons at eastern 20-25 wildy in pairs. At first they'd kill or chase me off for killing their bots, but eventually they got tired of it. One of the guys spoke a bit of English and wanted to practice. I found out that he was from Szechuan province. I tried to buy the hides they were collecting (I'd already reported all 8 of them and was curious how much they were selling them for), but his reply was "sorry I can't". Then I noticed that there are bots in Al Kharid that do nothing except tan dragon hides. A logical human would grab, 1 needle, some thread, a fire or lava staff, cash and a stack of nature runes. 24 slots for 24 hides = 3x8 = 8 dragonhide bodies each time that you alch in the shop. But these bots just run back to the bank with their loads. Also, it should be fairly clear that autoflaxers transfer their stuff to autobowstringers, possibly through middlemen. Bots trading with each other is hard to spot in a busy bank, although friends of mine that know what to look for have seen a pair idling in strange out of the way spots: upstairs in houses for instance. 2.) It used to be possible for a human to play two accounts at once. This was about 1.5 years ago. Since then, the increase in randoms has made it unfeasible. 3.) I suspect that part of the reason that Jagex keeps hosing staking and pures is the following: a.) every kid (I'm 30 incidentally) that I know that PKs transfers stuff back and forth between their main and their PK account. I actually don't care about this, it breaks the letter but not the spirit of rule in my eyes. b.) training a staker or pure account is harder, I suspect that people that make those accounts are more likely to buy RS gold, some kids (& adults) are impatient after all c.) I suspect that Jagex agrees with me about point b 4.) in the past couple of semestres, I've taken a few law classes at university - one of the things that I came away with is that bad laws undermine the legal system as a whole. a.) World of WarCraft allows you to mail items and cash between your 10 accounts on a given world (for a small fee). Thus they don't have to police and punish people from doing a natural behaviour. b.) I've already mentionned that many kids are moving thing back and forth between main and PKer accounts. c.) if you've consciously broken a rule already it becomes easier to break others, particularily if the rule wasn't well-thought out, is hard to detect and no one that you know gets punished for it

I think this is the only number up there that may be inaccurate. Because with this, you have to take into account the number of deaths they have and the amount of dhides they may have lost to the ppl out there pking them. However, its amazing to see this much RS money being funneled to the autoers =/ We need more done about this! ~Ddaanniielh Good point, but I don't see a way to estimate that, so consider mine to be a best case scenario estimate for their RS coin earnings. The only thing I can tell you is what happens when you do PK them: 1.) a bot will come back repeatedly as if nothing had happened. Eventually it might get moved to a nearby world (if you're on a Canadian world, which I usually am, it will often get moved to another Canadian world - not sure why this is). 2.) a sweatshopper will potentially come back and often swear at you in Chinese. I think 'cao ni ba' is something rude. ;) Other sweatshoppers will often say "hi" or "no kill pls"; which kind of works, psychologically its a bit harder to attacked someone, even a sweatshopper that is friendly. 3.) eventually, after about 10-20 bot kills, you may get their 'security' showing up - 1-3 people about your level. Names similar to the bots. Sometimes they suck and you get free gear, other times...

Maybe you should *coughs* look for a link *coughs* to a RS-themed community *coughs* on *coughs* LiveJournal where *coughs* the screenshots and data are posted publically? Googling *coughs* "The Great RuneScape Bot-Hunt" and *coughs* taking the LiveJournal hit would probably work as well ;)

$450 dollars in 163 working days; means they were all working for 13-18 days in that sample eg. I get up and go to work, that's one working day, you get up and go to work, that's a second working day. Its actually very good money, especially since Jagex allows you to play multiple instances of RS on the same computer, just different worlds. One computer could have a bot on EVERY world. Now, since bot-pimps (most of them are in China, go figure this is good money for the owner of the operation and probably funner than making plastic HappyMeal toys for the workers) have been allowed by Jagex to make deep inroads - I reckon a typical outfit looks like your typical Asian internet cafe: 12-60 computers, all of them running bots, with maybe one human worker per comp to do the randoms for bots. Possibly one worker assigned to passing certain quests for bot after bot. Probably a dozen guys working as green dragon hunters. Speaking of which, go kill dragon hunters in the wildy, some of them are bots outright, some of them are Asian sweatshoppers (makes no difference, both damage the game, difference is what they do when you try to pk them). For bonus points, time how long it takes their 'Security' to show up. These days they don't seem to care as much and it could take 8-12 bots/sweatshoppers killed before they send someone with a high level account after you.

(Submitted this as a letter to the TipIt Editors 2-4 days ago) Almost everyone that plays RuneScape dislikes bots. Some of us report them all the time, others whenever a particular bot annoys them and the rest either donÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t know what a bot looks or have given up on reporting. Now, Jagex claims that they donÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t like bots either and that their randoms are an effective at catching bots. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that Jagex has let the situation, all the while claiming that it had everything under control. Just tonight, I saw no less than 20 odd bots and sweat-shoppers at the eastern location of green dragons between 20-25 wildy on one of my usual worlds. Yes folks: 20 out of a maximum of 2000 on that server alone. Given that it is the wee hours of the morning here in Canada and its more like 20 out of 400 ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¹ÃâpersonsÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ on the server. This illustrates part of the problem: Jagex has ignored it long enough that the bot-pimps that use to run strings of bots can now afford to pay guys over in Asia money to play RuneScape day in and day out collecting RuneScape resources that are sold for RuneScape gold which is then sold for real world money. You can bet your party hat that these sweat-shoppers can pass randoms without blinking. Moreover, I have a sneaking suspicion that many of their bots beep to alert a human employee that a random needs to be seen to as well. Basically, the situation is troublesome because Jagex ignored the bots long enough to allow the bot-pimps to hire sweat-shoppers, thereby blurring the line between bot and sweat-shopper. Games are supposed to be fun and IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢m a cynical bastard so allow me to propose a cynical game that everyone who likes RuneScape can and should play: The Great RuneScape Bot-Hunt. First, IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll tell you how to play and then IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll tell you about the results of my current round of The Great RuneScape Bot-Hunt. To play, you need to report 10-15 bots with at least 1 stat visible in hiscores. Be sure to take a screenshot of you and the bot/sweat-shopper. Next, look up the bot on HiScores and Cut & Paste their visible stats and experience to a file on your computer, or post them to an article on a fansiteÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s forums or to your own blog. This way, you and others will be able to figure out how much experience the bot/sweat-shopper has earned since you reported it. Furthermore, a certain company that likes to sweep stuff under the carpet wonÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t be able to claim that the account in question never existed. Once you have a roster of 10-15 bots youÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢re done and ready to play. You can check every 2-3 days to see if Jagex has followed up on your Macroing report and banned the bot/sweat-shopper. Every week or so, you can look up all the surviving bots on hiscores and figure out how much experience theyÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve gained that week. Now comes the ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¹ÃâfunÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ part: figuring out how much RuneScape coin those bots earned! You look up how much experience the bots currently have and subtract the experience they had when you reported them to figure out how much they have gained. You assume that they have continued to do the activities they were doing when you reported them. For collector or skiller bots, you take the amount of experience gained and divide by the value of the unit they were collecting (100k xp divided by the 110 that each shark is worth). For combat bots, you take the Attack, Strength, Defence and Ranged increases and divide by 3 first, then by the hitpoints of the creature they were harvesting. If they increased in Prayer, assume that they buried the bones in the field and subtract those bones from the profits they made. Now that you know how many of each item type the bots made or collected, you can look up the values of those items on the official forums price list or a price list maintained by your favourite fansite. Tally up the values. Keeping checking ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¹ÃâyourÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ bots every two or three days to see if one of them finally got banned. Once a week or so, calculate how much your string of bots has earned. Trust me youÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll be cursing Jagex by the second week. Now that IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve told you how to play, let me tell you about ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¹ÃâmyÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ first string of bots, anonymized because Tip.It has a no names policy, but IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢d be happy to provide the Usernames on demand. Before I do, let me mention that this past summer I got to talk a little bit with a group of Chinese sweat-shoppers (one of whom spoke a bit of English and wanted to practice it) that were running about 8 level 126s collecting green dragon hides and dragon bones at eastern 20-25 green dragons. There would be two of the 126 accounts logged in and grinding at any given moment. I reported them all, even though they stopped killing me for killing their bots after the second day. It took Jagex about two weeks to ban all of those 126 accounts. More recently, I had a Psychology class wherein certain assignments had to be done via Excel ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ãâ which naturally made me think of collecting information on reported bots in an Excel Spreadsheet. I doubt youÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll like what IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve found. I reported 15 bots, and have screenies for 14 of them. One account, an essence miner seems to be dormant (maybe they forgot its password?). One green dragon hunter disappeared off of hiscores (was banned) after 1 day 18 hours 37 minutes. A mage tree woodcutter bot that I spotted North of the Dueling Arena was banned after 2 days 18 hours 2 minutes. The other twelve bots are still going. Worker number one I spotted spinning bowstrings at Lumbridge castle. HeÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s reached 22 days without a ban. I checked 3 days ago and heÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢d gained enough crafting xp that I reckon that heÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢d made 194k bowstrings. At 165 coins each (prices from SwiftSwitch) thatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s a whopping 32 MILLION coins. Worker number two is a bot that ranges blue dragons at Taverly dungeon. HeÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s gone 20 days without a ban. When I checked, heÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢d only gained enough prayer xp to bury 12 dragon bones. That leaves 2022 blue hides at 1800 each plus 2010 dragon bones at 1550 each for a total of 6,755,100 coins. Worker number three was a budding combat bot. His stats only got high enough to melee green dragons 3 days ago, so IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll consider him ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¹Ãâearning his keepÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ from that point on. HeÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s gone 19 days unbanned. Worker number four has cut about 28k yews (at 370 each) worth 10,291,550 coins so far. 18 days unbanned. Worker number five is also bowstring spinner and managed to 16k bowstrings as of 3 days ago. ThatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s a modest 2,644,290 coins. More recently, theyÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve started runecrafting as well. 17 days unbanned. Worker number six is another green dragon hunter, but heÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s managed to bury at least 395 dragon bones. This leaves 13156 green hides at 1500 each and 12761 dragon bones at 1550 each for an impressive total of 39,513,550 coins. 16 days unbanned. Worker number seven is a veritable godling amongst bots and sweat-shoppers. He has 99 fishing by a long shot (heÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s in the top 100 fishers)! HeÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s managed 6400 sharks at last check, at 800 a piece thatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s a measly 5,120,000 coins. 13 days unbanned Worker number eight has cut 7200 yews which at 370 a log is 2,668,070 coins. Also 13 days unbanned. Worker number nine is a fishing-bot, one of numerous ones at the Fishing Guild. HeÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s managed 9796 sharks at 800 each makes 7,837,454 coins. 13 days unbanned. Worker number ten is another fishing-bot that ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¹ÃâpeoplesÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ the Fishing Guild. HeÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s managed 6025 sharks, which at 800 a shark is 4,820,727 coins. Worker number eleven is another ranger-bot working the blue dragons at Taverly (although IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve seen plenty at Ogre Enclave too). He is careful not to bury any bones and thus managed 4357 blue hides at 1800 a hide and 4357 dragon bones at 1550 a bone, netting his bot-pimp 14,595,950. Lastly, worker number twelve runs cosmics in Zanaris. I had to refer to TipItÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s XP Tables to figure out that he made 7133 cosmics to get to level 59 which grants double cosmics. Thereafter, he made 72,095 more cosmics. Since they are around 180 a rune, thatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¹Ãâs 14,261,040 coins. Nifty, huh? So how much did these twelve bots earn in the 163 working days since I reported them up till 3 days ago when I estimated their earnings? Drum roll please! 140,507,731 coins! Now go look up how much a party hat or a Godsword is. Are you mad at Jagex yet? I sure am. A quick Google search suggest that our 140.5M RuneScape coins is $3.20 per Million (Canadian dollar is roughly at par with US dollar these days). Thus these illicit profits netted $449.60 US/CDN to the bot-pimps/sweatshop owners. And still Jagex claims to have the situation under controlÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâæ So what can players do? DonÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t bother ranting on the official forums, Jagex will merely delete or hide your thread and give you a black mark. Instead, play The Great RuneScape Bot-Hunt and publicly blog about it. Eventually a media person writing about RuneScape will notice and write about it. Hopefully that will shame Jagex into taking effective action against bots and sweat-shoppers. Maybe if we are really lucky, Jagex will take action quickly to get rid of the bots before the Great RuneScape Bot-Hunt gets noticed by the media. One can only hope. EDIT: forums mangled layout a bit, fixed it. ALSO: in the past 4-5 days, only one of the bots has been banned, the rest are at 3 weeks+ unbanned Jagex = 4 letter word

thank you - have you seen the revised 1.5 version that isn't a skill? Trade Capacity v 1.5 It's based upon your current Skill Points & Quest Points already accumulated, but still locks the ability to trade certain classes of items behind Quest-Gates.

Unfortunately "noobs" is not a good replacement for Asian Miners - you'll need to do better. ;) Noob 1. low level character 2. any throw away character used to cheat, scout the wildy, as extra bankspace on f2p, do conduct scams 3. sarcastically a higher level character 4. jokingly anyone whose avatar wears a silly outfit 5. generic practically the only "swear word" that the Jagex filter allows 6. in frustration directed towards anyone that is using better or more prudent or sneakier combat tactics than you - like prayer, pj'ing, potting, running away, eating food, tele'ing out... 7. anyone that declines to give a beggar what they want 8. beggars 9. anyone that turns down a shoddy trade offer 10. the one that offered the shoddy trade 11. a brand new player Asian Miner 1. one of the Asian people that worked on railways and in mines in Australia & North America, subject to discrimination and head taxes around the 1860-1900s 2. a kid, often Asian, paid (although sometimes the pay is the ability to play) to play a game and collect resources 3. a bot or character, with an Asian name to purposefully seem to be #2 (or as you said since Western kids have trouble remembering their names) as you can see, Asian Miner is a much better, clearer descriptive term than noob - and it isn't one that tries to Politically-Correctly sweep history under the table as you are trying to do

Bit slow on thinking things through are you? lol Had you read it and thought about it, you'd realize that: 1.) Multiers would have to invent time per drone character they made if they wanted it to be useful 2.) Reporting a multier/bot doesn't cost the cheater anything other than an easily replaceable account. It does cost the reporter and Jagex staff time to process the infraction. The proposal shifts more of the cost to the cheater and makes reporting bots & multiers worthwhile. 3.) Scammers often use throwaway 'merchie noob' accounts - oh noes! you reported an account that was probably emptied out as soon as the transaction was completed. Wow you really hurt that scammer, didn't you? ;) 4.) Autoers? you know those herds of lvl3s cutting yews behind Varrock castle on f2p? How much would you like to bet that each herd is run and controlled by one or two people? Oh noes! 1 out of 20 got temporarily taken out of commission by a random! yeah that'll stop them... If you haven't realized, randoms have long ago ceased to act as successful deterrents to autoers. It takes 10-20 minutes to get a noob off of Tutorial Island at the moment. Try it, time it. 24x60 = 1440 minutes per day 8x60 = 480 noobs off of the Island in an 8 hr shift... Are you *FINALLY* starting to see the problem? Yes? very good! Now, since you've been so kind as to follow along, I've revamped the submission so that it's no longer a skill and is simpler to slow people to understand: Trade Capacity v1.5

Doh, you're right - the original proposal was written in April of 2006 - before that bank was added.

Based upon comments from various people, esp RSN faith_hope & dwayne_dibly plus the realization that people were right, it'd be difficult to make Merchanting fun... So, back from a skullsession at the drawing board, I present to you: Trade Capacity Important Concept to Understand: NPC Buyer vs. human players Everyone can sell or buy anything to and from stores. To trade, give, sell to humans requires unlocking the capacity to Trade. Its no longer a skill in this proposal, but rather an additional statistic based upon stuff that Jagex wants us to do: Quest Points, Skill Points and Trade Capacity Points. Quest Points: 0-229 at the moment, Jagex clearly wants us to do quests. Skill points: Jagex also seems want us to work on skills, who'd have thunk? Basic (bottable) Resource Gathering: skill level x1 Mining Fishing Woodcutting Complex Resource Gathering: skill level x2 Farming Hunter Thieving {Agility?} {Slayer?} Basic Processing: skill level x3 Fletching Cooking Firemaking Complex Processing: skill level x4 Herblore Runecrafting Crafting Smithing Add up the total of the modified skill levels for the skill points section. eg. An all 99-er with all quests done would have 3000+229 = 3229 TC pts eg. An all 30-er with no quests done would have 1020 pts Trading Game: Stockmarket like dwayne_dibly suggested. Playable once per week, rewards 1-3 TC points - 52 weeks per year: 156 TCs per year extra. Each TC is 10 coins worth of trading capacity. The value of items for the purposes of calculating trading volume is high alch/specialty shop price NOT player-market value. Quest-Gates: Tier 1. unlocks capacity to trade with players, allows trading of: steel items, regular & oak wood, regular bones, basic 6 runes Tier 2. mithril items, willow, members runes, big bones, basic ess Tier 3. addy items, maple, potions, basic jewelry, baby dragon bones, pure ess, lvl 1 treasure trail items Tier 4. rune items, yews, mage robes, dragon hides, dragon hide armour, fremenik gear,dragon bones, lvl 2 treasure trail items Tier 5. dragon items, mage logs, barrows gear, dagannoth bones, lvl 3 treasure trail items How this will benefit the Meta-Game: -macro'ers seriously hosed -hackers risk more (either an account with high merchanting) or taking a long time to transfer the contents of a bank account to another -scammers faced with diminishing returns - 'pace' of volume of trade slowed down so that each deal is smaller and less worth cheating on, a recent post by a Barrows Scammed person might not have happened at all if they'd had to buy each piece of Verac's individually. Partly because scammed individual would have had more time to check, partly because scammer would have had to decide at which point to pull the scam. -as kovacs pointed out, this will limit the creation of throwaway Bot accounts to 2-3 per day, rather than dozens Changes: -more player friendly -encourages the player to do things that Jagex wants them to do anyway -simpler, so that even lazy, whiny kids should be able to understand it Quest-Gate for Tier 1: Make the quest extremely variable, so that it's different almost every time that you do the quest. 1.) Start Quest at Lumby Guide 2.) Deliver 1 of 12 possible items (12x) + 1 of 12 possible items (12x) to 1 of 6 possible people (6x) [864x ] 3.) Complete a Puzzle Box OR pay 1000 gp to skip if you're young/not good at them/a macroer/multier 4.) Deliver 1 of 6 possible Quest only items (6x) + 1 of 10 possible items (10x) to 1 of 20 possible people (20x) [864x1200 = 1036800] 5.) Random Event Type MiniGame - along the lines of the QuizShow - heck it could be a memory game, match 2 to items to get a pair and clear from table. 6.) Get letters of credit to be delivered to each f2p bank in game: West Falador, East Falador, West Varrock, East Varrock, Draynor, Al Kharid, Edgeville, Lumby (8) 7.) Talk to lumby guide 8.) parcels to be delivered to each f2p general store in the game: Falador, Edgeville, Dwarf Mines, Al Kharid, Lumbridge, Varrock, Rimmington (7) 9.) Talk to Lumby guide and PRESTO! Quest complete; you have learned the f2p map, the location of all banks and general stores and where to find some items. Gain 10 TC pts. Quest-Gates for Tiers 2, 3, 4 & 5: Similar but not as long, always featuring a Puzzlebox and Random Event Type MiniGame. Quest-Gate for Tier 3 Prerequisite: 10 Random Events will have to have to have been successfully passed (frog kissed, accept beer and kebab from dwarf, axe not damaged by ent, genie lamp accepted, etc.) Each failed event cost you one successful pass (bots, macroers and multiers will fail horribly at this condition. 1 delivery, one puzzlebox (2k to buy bypass), one minigame-random - 30 minutes Quest-Gate for Tier 4 Prerequisite: 50 Random Events will have to have to have been successfully passed (frog kissed, accept beer and kebab from dwarf, axe not damaged by ent, genie lamp accepted, etc.) Each failed event cost you one successful pass (bots, macroers and multiers will fail horribly at this condition. 2 delivery, one puzzlebox (5k to buy bypass), one minigame-random - 45 minutes Quest-Gate for Tier 5 Prerequisite: 100 Random Events will have to have to have been successfully passed (frog kissed, accept beer and kebab from dwarf, axe not damaged by ent, genie lamp accepted, etc.) Each failed event cost you one successful pass (bots, macroers and multiers will fail horribly at this condition. 3 delivery, one puzzlebox (10k to buy bypass), one minigame-random - 2 hrs ------------------------------- As always, thank you for reading this and contributing to the development of this idea!

The thing with Chinese miners and stuff is kinda offensive... Do you even know what a 'Chinese miner' is? They're called Chinese miners because most of them really are Chinese kids that are paid to play computer games. Some have argued that its a new form of child labour. Please read up on current/IT affairs before you make comments like that. Yes I find that term offnensive Um..What? I know most autoers have Chinese names, but usually aren't played by Chinese people. The reason they have Chinese names is because only Chinese people are smart enough to make bots (I'm a little biased, aren't I?), and they sell the bots which include names. Obviously, Chinese people that speak Chinese know Chinese names. So the names turn out Chinese. And I hate this suggestion. Sorry, but it sucks. Right then mister genius - come up with a better suggestion that would raise the cost of cheatign for macroers, multiers and scammers. I'm open to suggestion. :) Well? Let's hear it! ;)

The thing with Chinese miners and stuff is kinda offensive... Do you even know what a 'Chinese miner' is? They're called Chinese miners because most of them really are Chinese kids that are paid to play computer games. Some have argued that its a new form of child labour. Please read up on current/IT affairs before you make comments like that. Yes I find that term offnensive Then tell Boingboing.net and PennyArcade to find a new term - better yet suggest one yourself. ;)

The thing with Chinese miners and stuff is kinda offensive... Do you even know what a 'Chinese miner' is? They're called Chinese miners because most of them really are Chinese kids that are paid to play computer games. Some have argued that its a new form of child labour. Please read up on current/IT affairs before you make comments like that.

Trade volume would be measured in what an items goes for in specialty store/high alch value NOT player-market value ;)