qeltar

The word is "idiot". :roll: And if it's for those over thirteen, why is it being marketed towards pre-teens? ~q

I personally would be happy if someone started a new Part 2 article, preferably in somewhere that it would be more seen. One was started earlier but a mod closed it so I am not sure if it is wanted, though. ~q

Yes.. Jagex needs to do thiis. ~q

Do you have the book? It is official. It was produced by Jagex, they are the copyright holder. And they are marketing it to kids and pre-teens. It's a lot more than a "handful". The player moderators were mentioned only peripherally. My main point was not criticizing them but simply pointing out that they are effectively powerless. Jagex needs to manage its own game, not push the job off on players who can't do much of anything anyway. Well, it's only been resulting in people getting scammed for what, 10 months now? Relevance? How much work does it take to post an announcement warning people not to take expensive items into others' houses -- compared to writing an Easter event or overhauling the poll system? Only regular C. Again -- relevance? Am I taking in 50 million clams a year and telling people that I value stopping scams as a priority? I've reported many myself. Others I know have been reporting them for months. You're being very loyal with these apologetics, but you don't have the facts on your side. "Do something". Such as? Sorry, but I did do something -- I did more than anyone else I know ever has. ~q

That's a myth. ~q

I'm sorry Qeltar, but after going through the entire topic, he never said anything like that. Yes he did. It's on page three of this thread. Well, I don't think it was. Jumping in here with off-topic comments berating others for off-topic comments is utterly pointless. You've now posted three times since my prior post and you're still going on about it. If you think someone is breaking the rules, report them. If not, there are plenty of other threads that might be more to your liking. To get back to the subject... I have had a note added to the first page of the original article to acknowledge Jagex's rule change. I also revised part 2 (still going up Monday) to reflect this welcome rule change and give Jagex credit for it. As for the matter of the community, just go to the RS forums and check out the thread about Rule 2 in Rants. There you will see just how badly the community standards have been allowed to degrade -- dozens of people openly whining about how it's unfair that they can "no longer make money", and how luring "isn't scamming because the victim deserved it" and so forth. In short, a microcosm of much of what I discussed in my article. ~q

Your very first post directed at me called me a liar, accused me of falsifying the material in my article, and then ended with ""Owned much"? Yes thank you." You got even more abusive after that. If that's what you consider "respectful" then I'll have to respectfully disagree. But yet again, you fail to see useful comments, and concentrate on retaliating. What is it you want "looked into"? Go to Scholastic's web site, it says 9-12 right there. It also says it on the book at Amazon.com. And there's a thread right here at tip.it with someone posting a Scholastic book club flyer that her little brother brought home from school with the Runescape handbook on the first page. Nah, Jagex isn't marketing towards kids, are they? I'm crushed. (I've been engaging in online discussions on the 'net for the better part of 20 years; if you don't want to talk to me, I'll get over it quickly.) Yes.. they did it 3 days after my article went up, despite people complaining about it for 6 weeks. Just a coincidence, I'm sure. ;) ~q

A long-overdue decision, a triumph of decent people over scumbags, and vindication for those of us who have spent many hours over the last few weeks fighting for this change. ~q

I'm quite certain that that is not Pauly's blog. It is also from 2005. I've told people about this thread -- I have nothing to hide. As for politness, I suggest you review some of your own posts in this thread, and those of others. Considering that I have people here calling me "stupid, lazy, moron" etc.. I'd say I've been quite restrained -- far more than my critics. ~q

:lol: I really have to shake my head in amazement at how people will come up with the most ridiculous rationalizations for their nasty behavior -- and excuse Jagex from just about every responsibility as well. Jagex could ban luring if they wanted to. They simply don't care -- it's easier to turn a blind eye to the problem than to make an effort. That's all there is to this. And people deserve to get carjacked if they drive into bad neighborhoods, so this means carjackers are doing nothing wrong. :wall: Well, you have to look at yourself in the mirror every morning. Those are real people you are scamming, not just imaginary pixels. And the stuff about it being "too hard to prove" is a bunch of baloney. If Jagex cared about cleaning up its game half as much as it does about making more and more money, luring could be eliminated. No, most are a lot worse. ~q

I thought the tip.it forums were supposed to be above this sort of petty flaming? I'm done with this thread.. you guys can carry on maligning me in my absence. I'm sure you'll enjoy Part 2 even more -- it should be online Monday. ~q

This is untrue, it was never endorsed by Jagex. Someone wanted easy money - they published the book and called it official. Uh, no, sorry. That's not true. (If someone tried that they'd get sued so fast their head would spin -- assuming a publisher would even agree to publish it without permission from Jagex.) Do you have the book? I do. Open it up and look at the copyright notice. ~q *Sigh* There was a topic here about it before you joined. We found out it was not endorsed by Jagex. They have it on the RuneScape website for gods sake. Uh yeah.. I found one of those discussions here. A quote from one of them: The book is listed with Jagex as the copyright holder. Next? ~q

This is untrue, it was never endorsed by Jagex. Someone wanted easy money - they published the book and called it official. Uh, no, sorry. That's not true. (If someone tried that they'd get sued so fast their head would spin -- assuming a publisher would even agree to publish it without permission from Jagex.) Do you have the book? I do. Open it up and look at the copyright notice. ~q

highlanders, you seem to be unable to differentiate between disagreeing with my opinions and finding something I said that was false. I have as much right to my views as you do, and the mere fact that you don't like my views in no way makes them "false". I'd suggest reading the beginning part of the post by Makoto_the_Phoenix (which was excellent, incidentally -- thanks very much for your well-expressed thoughts, Makoto.) ~q

Well gee, parents might go to runescape.com and load up the Parents' Guide. And there they can get their fill of distortions and false claims to make them feel that kids are perfectly safe playing the game. Of course it says there that the game is for "all ages". :lol: This is pure apologetics. You have absolutely no way to know that it was "an error, simple". The book's been out for what, three months now? So why isn't it "fixed"? And tell me, was it also "an error, simple" for Jagex to choose to publish the official guide using the "largest publisher and distributor of children's books in the world", one that is also "the largest operator of school-based book clubs and school-based book fairs in the U.S"? Gee, I wonder why kids might start playing Runescape, hmm? You sound like a lawyer for Big Tobacco in the 1980s, trying to defend Joe Camel.

Impossible.. we all know that Runescape is only for players over 13. :lol: Cop-out. Fact remains that they could get rid of the senseless pursuit of rare items any time they want. I'm sorry, were you there? I talked to the guy, did you? He wasn't making money, he was losing it. So it's okay for the people in charge to make lying and scamming legal because they can't be bothered to enforce their own rules? And then engage in a cover-up of the ruling? ~q

And of course, kids always read mile-long treatises written by lawyers when signing up for a free game. :lol: There are no protections against kids under 13 signing up for this game. They do it because their friends are members, and because Jagex makes the game kid-friendly and aims their ads at them. The "user agreement" is there to cover Jagex's butt, and for no other reason. If they really didn't want players under 13 they would make more of an effort to publicize this fact. Instead, they publish an Official Runescape Guide, have it published by a kids' publishing company, and put an age range on it of 9 to 12. Explain that, hmm? Not much of a rebuttal there. I'll assume you are conceding the point; thanks. See above. Plus the websites where the game is promoted, and Jagex telling parents that the game is for "all ages". :lol: Jagex tells people that they consider an online presence to be important. How many times, since you started playing, have you seen a Jagex mod in the game? I'm level 117. I've never seen one -- not once. Most people I know have seen them only 1 or 2 times at most. Jagex doesn't supervise the game at all. They rely on their barely functional reporting system, which most of the time doesn't result in action anyway. It's a farce. It's even harder when your priority is increasing revenues by expanding your user base, rather than cleaning up the game. Creating a game that you know is attracting a huge base of kid users, and then slapping a disclaimer saying "13+" and then washing your hands of the matter -- that's dishonest. You won't score any points with personal attacks. The proof is in the sticky in the PK-ing room at the Runescape forums, subsequently confirmed by Jagex mods in a lengthy thread in Forum Feedback. It's legal now. It's been legal for over a month. Jagex has refused to address the issue, and has shot down and silenced every attempt to discuss it. If you want to gaze into a crystal ball, feel free. What I said is 100% accurate... they have legalized item scamming through luring into the Wilderness. Perhaps they will change their minds. And perhaps having a lot of people read Part 2 of my article, which describes what they did with this fiasco, will help persuade them to do so. Irrelevant. It's still scamming, Jagex does nothing to educate people about it, and has now legalized it.

No, I am blaming Jagex for -- among other things -- deliberately marketing this game towards those under 13, then pretending that they have no players under 13 because you have to answer an age question when you sign up for a new account. It's called "turning a blind eye", and corporations that do this need to be held accountable for their dishonesty. And the state of the community is a direct result of Jagex's actions: the way they advertise the game, the ability to create disposable accounts, the target marketing towards young kids, the lack of supervision, the abysmal customer support. That's all why Runescape has increasingly a reputation as the worst community in the online gaming world. On the contrary, because one of my principal arguments is that Jagex is trying to expand its game by appealing to the very kids their lawyers claim they don't want playing. I didn't say they did that specifically to attract children, I just said that it DOES attract children. If anything is a lie, then, it would be your mischaracterization of my comments. It has everything to do with kids, because easy and free access appeals to kids far more than it does to adults.

Thanks.. and your comparison to the tobacco companies is more apt than at first I realized. Just like the tobacco companies, they claim that their product is for an older age group, while continuing to market it to those who are younger, and ignoring the huge size of their underage clientele. Jagex's entire attitude towards the age of its players can be summarized as "nudge nudge, wink wink". If they really don't want kids under 13 playing, why do they bury this information? Go look at the Parents' Guide.. see anything about 13 and over? How about the new book Jagex published -- the Official Runescape Guide no less -- for which they used Scholastic, a prominent kids's publisher? And the age range of this book? 9 to 12. ~q

I apologize for not living up to your high standards of writing. (BTW, you want to use "its" here, not "it's".) Myth. One that Jagex is doing a great job of perpetuating, of course. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of perfectly legal players under 13. The 13+ stuff is a recent invention, and none of the players who were under 13 when it was implemented were told they had to leave the game. More to the point, Jagex aims and markets this game towards kids. They advertise it on kid-oriented web sites, they fill it with pretty pictures and childish concepts, and they do nothing to educate parents on its unsuitability for children. Go into a school and talk to the kids.. most of them either play the game or have a friend who does. It spreads by word of mouth, and Jagex does NOTHING to stop this. Because of course, they want the money from these kids. Go to the Parents' Guide. See what it says about the ages of Runescape players. Go ahead, do it. It's Jagex's responsibility to: - Provide accurate and reasonable information for parents to decide if they want to have their kids play or not; - Live up to their promises, such as their claims that they maintain an active presence in the game and that they deal with scamming seriously; and - Not ignore the fact that there are tens of thousands of kids under 13 in their game just because their lawyers put a disclaimer on their web site. They are not doing those things. ~q

And here was my reply. :) Level 117 combat, 1838 total levels, 73 million XP. How about you? Is that so. Well, I spend 99% of my time on P2P, and my observations are based upon the members' version of the game. It is overrun with abuse, scamming, luring, hacking, and everything else I described. F2P is simply that much worse. So much worse, in fact, that I never go there unless I must. And yet, guess what? That's where most of the kids are, because they have no money. And Jagex, as much as they have refused to clean up P2P, have let F2P degrade far worse. In fact, some have theorized that they let F2P get so bad to encourage people to pony up for members. There's a thread about this article right now on the Tip.it forums. :) And I agree that the Tip.it community is overall of higher quality than Runescape as a whole... but that's not a very high bar to clear, is it? Actually, I made this very point myself right on the first page of the article. Perhaps you missed it? :) Do I? Go to world 22, and see the people staking items worth tens of millions on a single duel. For many players even one such item represents months' worth of work. Also worth several hundred dollars on the black market. No, when I talk to people who say they want to stop playing but can't, or that their grades are slipping but they are still online, or that they have a project due the next day but they are still on RS -- they are addicted. If they don't want kids under 13, why do they market the game towards that age bracket? They advertise on sites that cater to that age group. The game has a widespread reputation as being for kids, which Jagex does nothing to counter. Heh... the oldtimers and adults are leaving the game in droves, specifically because of the invasion of kids. Yes, but weekly updates of what? For example, there is a serious flaw in player-owned houses. You can die in one and lose all of your items. Jagex says that they are 'safe' and you cannot lose your items. This situation has been going on for months. Does Jagex announce that there's an issue they are working to resolve? Do they put out a warning to people not to take pricy items into houses? Nope.. they give us a low-level quest. Last week, while people were falling for this scam, they announced their graphic redesign of cows and chickens. Meanwhile, people have been complaining about the abysmal reporting feature and flaws in the trade interface, scams at the Duel Arena and any number of other serious matters. Seem like, perhaps, misplaced priorities? They seem to have lots of time for finding ways to expand their membership to get more paying customers. How many hundreds of hours did they say it took to translate the entire game to German? It would take 5 minutes to eliminate many of the common scams. So why isn't it done? This isn't about my kids. They are lucky enough to have two very computer-literate parents who play the game. It's about all the parents whose kids play because they've heard that Runescape is "safe for kids", in large part because Jagex claims it is and provides no warnings about many of the negative aspects. And that's my beef.

Anyone in Europe having trouble accessing the article, please try this link? http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/03/2 ... xposed_uk/ If a mod is willing to put that into the first post too, that would be great. Thanks. ~q

Jagex knows about these bugs. They not only do not fix them, they refuse to warn their players. The Knowledge Base, to this day, continues to tell players that they cannot lose items in other people's houses. When I and others tried to warn people on the official forums -- without mentioning any specifics of scams, just saying houses were not safe -- Jagex's toadies (forum mods) locked the threads without valid reason. (One had the audacity to lock my thread not because I broke any rules, but becaue "others might break the rules". Pretty transparent.) What does all that tell you? ~q

my point is: sh*t happens everywhere, anytime Jagex should be doing more to clean that up. Instead they are more interested in covering up the problems and blaming the victim. and staking is certainly not gambling, it's mainly about skills and items and perhaps a bit of luck Poker is about skills and luck too. Is that not gambling? "Staking", "gambling" and "betting" are synonyms. ~q

instead of blaming jagex, you should put some tips on that article about how you guys as parents could resolve this, not by giving jagex negative commentary, but sit with your children and have a talk with them about mmorpgs Part of the reason why I wrote this article series is to help educate parents and others about what RS is really like. Most simply have no idea. As for Jagex, they are largely responsible for the ignorance of parents. Go take a look at the company's Parents Guide. What do you see -- an accurate portrayal of the good and bad parts of the game, or a marketing pamphlet intended to get Jagex more paying customers? I am spending several weeks writing a large web site that will contain the information that parents need but Jagex refuses to provide. The article series is part of that effort. your article needs work im afraid to say, maybe people shouldn't see just the bad in things Jagex puffs up all the good things in the game. SOMEONE has to show the bad parts. How can someone decide if they want their kids to play this game if they can't find out what the game is really about? And make no mistake: Jagex IS deliberately targeting this game at kids, both under and over 13, regardless of what their lawyers may bury in the middle of a disclaimer page. ~q