Yoko Kurama

My apologies, then. I wasn't aware you were joking. I have heard that line before in serious contexts, so I assumed you were being serious. Cheers.

I am liking my spiffy Pharoah's outfit. I liked the fact that they are overrides, so I can actually use them rather than storying them in house. Though, I only had this outfit bought from the Loyalty Store. By the time it's reopened, they will probably cost more. Should have bought more earlier.

Never, it's always somebody else's fault. That simplistic libertarian rhetoric is pure nonsense. Individuals are not sovereigns who do they as please. Individuals are a social construction, and they are social creatures who act out of a social context. Their environment has a tremendous effect on their being and how they understand themselves and how they relate to their surroundings and how they act. This is a sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological, philosophical, and scientific fact. It will take a lot more than some one-liner to discredit this.

Let me be perfectly clear: I don't give even the most minuscule of thought as to what you think about my posts. I am not here to be interesting or entertaining to you. If you wish to defend Jagex, that is your prerogative. I, however, am here to share my thoughts, and I will continue to do so until the people who own this site ask me to stop, or I no longer feel the need to do so. I have my supporters as well as my critics. Complete straw man. I have never given the impression that is pure evil. What I have stated explicitly is that it has, in addition to its escapist benefits, various disadvantages and adverse effects on players if it is played in excess, and that unscrupulous companies such as Jagex exploit that for profit. They should be more mindful of their social responsibility to their player base. There's a lot that's wrong with the game, and with Jagex, particularly in recent years. I am going to tell it how I perceive it. I refuse to sugarcoat this and pretend that I like what they're doing when I don't feel that way. I have praised them in the past, though only when I see that it is deserved. Not for the sake of some erroneous need to be 'balanced' or be 'nice'. If it's an ugly situation, then I will paint an ugly picture, it's that simple. No. They are exploiting psychologically predatory designs and structures (the Skinner box) in order to get people hooked onto the game and make profit. They don't force these people in the literal sense to engage in this behavior but they do strongly encourage it. And that is my problem with them. There are other people who are not as sensible as you and I, and Jagex preys on them. I blame them for this. Last I checked, forums are a place to share your thoughts and insights, and that is precisely what I am doing. If my thoughts and insights offend your loyal sensibilities to Jagex, then that is no concern of mine. Last I checked, forums are also a place for critiques, not just some orgy of praise. ---- Depends. They certainly exploit the poor, and certain chemicals and our attachment to them. In nature, we are attracted to sweets because the sweetest things in nature are the most nutritious: fruits and for vitamins. What a place like Macdonalds does is it preys on that by lacing everything with sugar, extra sweet sauce, extra sweet bread, extra sweet meat, and so on. To such an extent that it's so sweet that it's far more sweeter than anything found in nature. It's not hard to deduce why people like that stuff.

I have never stated that RS is the only place with grinding. I have also explicitly acknowledged that this is a general problem with MMORPGs. I do however think that RS is one of the more egregious offenders in this respect. Furthermore, since I play RS rather other MMORPGs, I am more familiar with it, and thus I am more inclined to critique it. No. I understood it perfectly. This is not a 'personal responsibility' scenario. There are various factors at work here, such social engineering on Jagex's part, and the perverse incentives they set up -- that's far more important than 'personal' choice.

Yes, good thing to remember. I would like to clarify that I haven't accused anyone of rule-breaking. I have however spoken of it in a completely hypothetical way, "I would prefer it they were account sharing so that their health wouldn't suffer so much".

Completely irrelevant analogy. It's more like complaining about your boss because your boss has subtly incentivized you to work for ungodly amounts of hours in the worst of conditions.

We are not talking about cheating in general. We are talking about cheating by top players who are immersed into this mindless race. That is a unique case. Also, I am discussing mainly RS, which is also a unique case for its excessive grinding and efficiency culture. The situation at the top of the hiscores is entirely Jagex's fault, they are the ones who encourage it. It certainly wasn't always this way, and is only a few years old, and largely of their own doing. Also, it's been proven time and time again that human beings are social creatures, malleable to fault. Our surrounding environment has a tremendous effect on us. The fact that RS players weren't always this way, and now suddenly are, is very telling. And it didn't simply happen because people woke up one day feeling some irresistible urge to get 200M and play 20 hours a day.

The only joke here, a rather predictable one at that, is you coming to Jagex's defense no matter what. I refuse to be cowed around by people like you because I actually care about the health and well-being, physical and mental, of other people and of other players. I understand that you think it's no big deal if people throw their lives away (in every sense of the word) for the noble purpose of numbers in a virtual world, but I don't share your disgusting lack of regard towards my fellow human beings and players. Not only is the inherent design geared towards this sort of thing, but so are their policies (slow rates, no bonus, server wide messages, skill capes, Hiscores, etc.). As long as Jagex designs a game which requires and incentivizes this sort of behavior, I shall be here to criticize them. For RS addictions, yes. It's been discussed on these forums that the very design of MMORPGs exploits the Skinner box to entrap people and induce addiction. Runescape is one of the worst examples of this because of its uniquely excessive focus on grinding.

There is no shame in this, and nor I do wish that Jagex cracks them down. Jagex is the only entity responsible for incentivizing this sort of obsessive and unhealthy gameplay, no one else. So I am all for players defying their will and making a mockery out of them in any way possible. They deserve it for catalyzing this disgraceful race and circus.

At this point, for the sake of the players, I would rather prefer that they were all sharing their accounts rather than actually putting in 20-22 hour gaming sessions.

Oh, I see what you mean. Still an unlikely possibility now that he is allegedly back to work. Is it not enough that he made a quasi-comeback? That's nostalgic enough.

Zezima is not going to be able to bridge the xp gap, there's absolutely no chance of that. He also seems to have a job and a life, I very much doubt he is seriously considering 5.2b total xp.

Yes, if we all slave at it like factory workers with working hours longer than the worst of the Industrial Revolution, a 20-22 hours a day (or perhaps we can account share), then we too can get 99 Divination very quickly! Is Jagex not benevolent for such a sensible route to 99? :roll:

To the best of my knowledge it has not yet been confirmed if pendants obtained before the date that bonus experience is allowed will be usable on Divination.

The game is so obviously in a period of decline that this cannot be denied, as far as popularity and the player base is concerned. Whether this decline is terminal, I do not know. I don't think it is, but it is a period of severe decline. Sure, they can yield more profits from a dwindling customer base, through a process which is basically nothing but accounting tricks. There's nothing wrong with that, most business do this sort of stuff, but it is unsustainable. The underlying cause, the declining player base, is worrisome. The numbers are absolutely astonishingly low. If I had seen such numbers in 2005, I might have thought that half the servers had crashed. Jagex has yet to reverse this trend of declining users, and I am not too optimistic on that note. If they fail to do so, it will eventually spell ultimate doom. A lot of the stuff they're doing is simply not marketable. Just consider a skill like Divination. How are they supposed to attract new players with this? "Click on these balls for 200-300 hours and then do nothing..."? That old MMORPG model of grinding forever is just not attractive (or ethical). It won't work. Runescape is unique in that it consists of a fairly boring and torturous journey involving grinding, with no instant gratification, or great end-rewards. You just hop from one boring journey to another. That stuff doesn't sell in 2013. I have adapted the perspective of a new player for the purposes of this bit. Runescape would certainly seem terrifying from that perspective.

Saradomin is a sanctimonious douchebag. I don't mind ruthless mass murder, but at least be honest about it. I sort of like that about Zaros, he's unapologetic about his empire and ways. Saradomin tries to gloss all over it and pretend it ain't so, when it so clearly is so.

It's a good update in theory, though the number of loyalty points needed to buy SGS stuff will probably be prohibitively expensive.

It's perfectly possible and plausible that his no-lifing exacerbated his pre-existing heart condition. I don't think it's a coincidence that he felt his sharp heart pains while playing and not before.

It was nice to see Zezima return. It made this seem like it was 2005 again. Of course, it isn't, and one can never go back home again, but it was nice.

If he can do 99 RC and Slayer back in the day, then he can do Divination. Though obviously he's been putting in extra time to catch up. Still, I think he will make it to 99, but I very much doubt he's going to make it to 5.2B.

I do, and I have been vocal about this. Various people I know have been toiling away at it like zombies. Someone in my clan (True Maxed) mentioned that despite Jagex's best efforts most servers are lowly populated. Even things like the EoC beta, and other modernizing aspects like RS3 and nostalgia methods such as Old School have left the game in a rather unpopular state. Divination won't really win them any new players either. It's really hard to market it, "if you spend 300+ hours clicking on these balls, you could be 99 and then do nothing...". As long as the game is fundamentally focused on grinding at boring activities for no particular reason, it will be unattractive to newer players and will only be able to keep hold of older players (which are a diminishing group) who have too much invested to quit.

No, almost all skills need afk. If a skill is fun and something people want to do, then I agree, there's no need for afk. If it isn't (which most skills are), then Jagex has a responsibility, in my view, to provide afking methods that are fast. Divination falls under the latter category. If you don't want to provide afking, then don't make a boring and laboring activity that no one wants to do, but feel compelled to do anyways because of the rewards, prestige, and experience-crazy culture you have set up. It's that simple. Dungeoneering, for instance, I regard as a great and fun skill, and I have no problem whatsoever that it isn't afk-able and that it requires attention and engagement. Other skills, and Divination, not so much. Runescape is supposed to be a game, and fun, not an energy-sucking and fun-sucking part-time job or 19th-century factory. Design fun skills and maybe, just maybe, people will actually want to do them, instead of wanting to come to you and complain and ask for afk.

Someone at one of the Divination training spots complained that because he had to keep clicking too often, he wasn't able to properly socialize. Divination is slightly afk-friendly, but not enough so, in my view.

Doesn't seem afk-able enough. I would have liked for it to have been as afk-able as pre-nerf (of August 2012) Runespan. That's pretty dreadful by modern standards. And most of us do not care about experience past 99, so the fact that it is 70k at 99 is no consolation at all. We have, and why shouldn't we? I don't see the inherent and mystical value of grinding and no-lifing.