Armadyllo

I'm glad so many people liked the article, especially considering how long I rambled on. (And thanks to the TipIt crew for the nice introduction!) I don't believe for a moment that the shop update was the end of the bot-war, or even one of the most important battles. I'm just kinda impressed that it got done. The Pest Control update was remarkable for the same reasons. That's the update where they installed shields on the portals, added a new set of exciting rewards, and... oh, they took the XP rate down a long way. We know full well that it wasn't a universally popular move. On the other hand, PC was causing complaints before the update, with people claiming that it was now easier to get high combat stats than before, leading to people reaching 126 who'd not played for long. Apparently someone at Jagex decided to nerf it in the interests of keeping the game challenging, regardless of the obvious complaints it'd cause. On a separate point, I didn't see this as a completely pro-Jagex article. The decisions and responses coming out of Jagex aren't 100% perfect - and no-one seriously expects them to be - but there are Right and Wrong reasons to criticise Jagex, and I'd rather see people keep to the Right reasons. Other games have their own ways of dealing with macroers. Perhaps the key is to design the game from the beginning in such a way that macroers can't have too great an impact on proper players. It might be possible, and if Jagex ever releases another game - their corporate website's mentioned in previous years that they've thought of this - we'll see what they learnt from their years of running RuneScape. But how big a change can they make to the existing game without losing too much? (This might make an interesting article for someone else to write!)

I can feed a huge number of tuna to my pet kitten, and it won't mind, even though each one is about the same size as the kitten. It won't even get heavier. Then there's stuff we can learn about people's behaviour... If there's something silly that people can do, they WILL do it. Whenever there's a bug and someone's got stuck, there'll be at least one world where a crowd of people has come along and deliberately gotten themselves stuck to see what it's like. Or those stray dogs in Varrock. You can shoo them away, and they'll whine and run off. So you occasionally see teams of people shooing the dog back and forth as fast as they can, which looks mighty unkind. They don't get rewarded from it, they just feel like doing it. (You can give the dog a bone instead, but how often does anyone do that?) I suppose silly behaviour isn't unique to RuneScape. It's just toned down in the real world because it can have a penalty or down-side. (Try treating a dog like that in this country and see how long it takes for you to be prosecuted. Or, better still, don't.)

RuneScape is convenient for young players: 1. You can play RuneScape on a low-spec computer without installing any special software except Java. That means you can play it in a school computer room, and your friends will see it, so they might start playing. 2. It's really not very hard to control your character. If you want to do something, you click on it. 3. You don't have to pay. These are very sensible features for a game to possess, especially a game that's got relatively basic graphics and a simple combat system. Instead of trying to compete with the awesome graphics of the latest games, Jagex has chosen the low-spec, low-cost end of the market. Of course, the low-spec, low-cost end of the market is where you find young players. The happy-happy US legal system has rather strict laws about collecting personal details off children. RuneScape's minimum age rule looks like a basic attempt to avoid the issue by declaring that children aren't allowed in RuneScape at all, so anyone who does give their personal details to Jagex must have claimed to be 13. This doesn't make much difference to the players (except the under-13s), but it would save Jagex a legal nightmare. What I'm getting at is that I don't think it's hypocrisy that they attract young people but block anyone who's under 13 (and if it were, it'd be bleedin' stupid - there'd be no benefit for Jagex). I think it's just inevitable that a low-spec, low-cost game will attract young players. The age restriction is unrelated. As experienced players, the answers to their questions may be really obvious to us. Perhaps they're not so obvious to a newcomer. Any system is simpler once you've had the chance to get your head around it. Jagex has its knowledge base, for those who are willing to read it. TipIt has... considerably more information... for those who know where it is. Of course, many people don't want to take the time and effort to read guides and instructions. There's no helping those who will not help themselves. (I try to be patient with 'em. I fail at this.) Jagex approaches this problem by making simple animations of its rules and putting them in place of the advert banners; I find these dreadfully patronising, but it's got to be worth a try. Besides, I don't like advert banners either.

There's a very prevalent attitude these days about how Jagex has ruined RS by catering to younger players. Bambino's letter is a wonderful counterargument, with which I mostly agree. ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ As for what I said in my own article... Frankly I'm deeply honored that TipIt was willing to publish my article. I'm not in any way an active member of TipIt's community, although I've been around RuneScape in various guises for quite a while. Jagex IS a corporation, yes, and it's perfectly reasonable to refer to them as one. The thing about large teams is that they behave very differently to small groups and individuals. In the beginning, when the Brothers Gower created the universe, and the world was formless and dark, they could say "Let there be XXX," and, lo, XXX would be created exactly as they wanted it. They'd have to create it themselves, but there'd be no wasting of time and nothing else to distract them. Now there's a large Content Development team. If Paul ordered "Let there be another Mahjarrat quest, and make it high-level," someone would write down what they thought he meant, send it back to him, ensure they'd got the right idea, rewrite the concept until it was suitable, code it up, explain to a Graphics artist what they wanted, etc. The resulting quest would be very strongly influenced by the creative ideas of the developer. So, although the quest is produced by Jagex Ltd, the company, we are effectively dealing with the few individuals who were personally involved in the project. My article was largely inspired by a rant I saw on Jagex's own forums years ago. A player felt that Jagex was failing to address racism adequately, so he posted the names of every member of staff (off their corporate site) and claimed that each and every one of them was racist. Although the abuse report he'd sent in was clearly ignored (maybe because it was never read? - how many millions of reports do they get?) it was utterly ridiculous to conclude anything about the personal opinions of every single employee. Thanks for reading.