Here is a promise made by Jagex, that thisu update was to stop real-world-traders. [hide]20 April 2006 - Rune Essence adjustment Today we have made an adjustment to rune essence mining due to players breaking rule 7 and rule 12, using macros to mine the rune essence and then sell it. As you are probably aware we have various systems in place to detect people breaking rule 7 and ban them. These systems work very effectively at detecting people breaking this rule, and make macroing a really bad way to try and train a high level character. The problem we are now solving is not a problem with our macro detection systems which are still working well, but rather a problem with banning being an ineffective punishment against abusers who only use very low level accounts, and who have no intention of ever playing the game properly. Over the last few weeks we have banned literally hundreds of accounts a day for macroing at the rune essence mine. However the bans were ineffective as the abusers could just create more low level accounts that they didn't care about to mine more. We also track trades so we can ban the recipiant of the illegally obtained items, but the abusers in this case were swapping the runes for gp, and then selling the gp for real world money on auction sites. Of course the person buying the gp for real world money gets banned, because we track the money they received in an unbalanced trade to a macro account, but the seller doesn't care that their customers get banned shortly after, as they have their real world money by then. The fundamental problem is that rune essence was one of the few areas of the game which could be used to generate a reasonable amount of RuneScape money on a 'throwaway' low level free account. Normally to earn large amounts of money quickly you need to level up an account first, and then of course you care if it gets banned so our normal deterrent is effective. We have therefore split rune essence to have 2 grades. Normal essence can only be used to make the six basic runes, whereas pure essence can be used to make any rune. You can mine both types of essence at the same place as before. The kind of essence you receive is automatically decided when you mine the rock. You will always get pure essence only if your mining is over 30 and you are on a members' world, otherwise you will get normal essence. As a one-off event whilst we introduce this, existing essence in your bank and inventory will have been automatically converted to pure essence if you are a member or have other members-only items in your bank, provided you have level 30 mining or runecrafting. Since free players can only craft the six basic runes anyway, the normal essence is just as good for its intended purpose of letting free players do low level rune crafting. However it is not so useful for selling to members who want to make law and nature runes (who we believe buy the vast majority of rune essence in Runescape) which should reduce its price significantly and make it a much less appealing proposition for real world traders. The only people who should be significantly affected by this are players mining very large amounts of essence on free accounts purely to sell to members. There are better way of making money on high level free accounts anyway, so this change should only really affect players trying to making large amounts of money on a low level free account - which is of course the exact idea. We would also like to yet again remind our players NOT to break rule 12 and be tempted to buy RuneScape gold for real world money. Nearly all the gold being offered for sale in this way was generated by cheating on 'throwaway' accounts. If you buy it not only are you encouraging further cheating, but you run the very real risk of being banned yourself as the money you receive is dirty money and will be tracked. Again we have banned countless players for breaking rule 12 and fuelling this problem, and will continue to do so. We hope most players will agree we shouldn't let rule breakers spoil this game, and we are determined to not let them do so. As well as banning, where necessary we will also make minimal changes to the game to make rule breaking unviable[/hide] Many free players lost huge amounts of money through this update, as many p2p merchants made huge amounts of money. If Jagex was doing thsi to truly stop RWT'ers, then tehy can remove it as they are no more. If, as some suspect, tehy did this in order to eliminate a f2p cash oppurtunity, fine. But at least be honest about it. Making P-ess f2p(or making all ess make all runes) would make runecrafting much more affordable.If pure essense was removed, crafting regular essence with a lower runecrafting level might not produce a profit if the price of essence was to stablize high; higher level runes, in comparison, would generate a heavily increased profit due to the cheapness of the essence, more than the already-large profit one can gain now. I imagine the cost of higher level runes would lower because of this and cheaper runes would rise, making it easier for high levels to train and more difficult for low levels, but I believe the current system balances out nicely; cheap runes can be crafted using cheap essence, with a low xp value, and valuable runes can be crafted using valuable essence, with a high xp value. There will not be any concern with wasting essence on low-level runes thanks to the relative cheapness of regular essence right now, and this would remain an excellent way to make money in RuneScape for those that take the time to train it (it's one of those few skills that pays for itself). is really the principle of the thing with me. We were told one thing. Now that the condition is effectively dealt with (or will be in January,) there is no need for this any longer. It isn't the money. It is the taht it was a lie. If they keep two separate essences, they are saying the reason that they created them is a lie. And, they are just hoping we are too stupid to notice.